A Man of Action
by Thescarredman
Summary: A continuation of 'Man of Honor'. Even the solidest assumptions can slide out from under your boots when you travel with the crew of Serenity. River's not the only Tam who's full of surprises...
1. Plain Talk

"I'm guessin drug number two's no good either," Mal said, wiping the blood from his split lip, "and this is one of those triflin little side effects you mentioned."

Doctor Simon Tam was too busy to answer, being fully engaged in strapping down his sister's wrists. Jayne struggled to hold the kicking, thrashing girl down on the exam table while her brother pinned them one at a time and secured them. Once her wrists were cuffed, Jayne grabbed one flailing leg and held it in the ankle cuff with both hands, unmindful of the kicks to the head he was taking from the other, until Simon drew it snug. Then he lay across the last free limb while the doctor finished with it, and they stepped back, breathing heavily, their faces blank masks as they looked at her.

Mal studied the girl's wide rolling eyes and bared teeth, spit flying from her mouth as she tossed her head and screamed. He'd rescued more than one horse trapped in a burning barn, and had had to listen to a few he couldn't; the resemblance wrenched at his heart. He took a quick breath and put his 'captain' face on before he spoke. "Put her out."

The two men turned their battered faces to him. "I'm not sure sedating her's a good idea," Simon said, placing his fingers on her wrist. She writhed at his touch and started speaking rapid-fire, nothing understandable. Rather, they were words Mal had never heard before. But cussing sounded the same in any language.

"Well, we've gotta move her, and we can't do it like this."

"Move her?" Simon drew a breath, no doubt to protest.

Mal cut him off. "You can't leave her, doc. She doesn't need to be here, and she's just in the way." And besides, the passage leading past sickbay was a busy one, and he had no intention of letting the rest of the crew see her like this every time they passed by. "We need this space freed up for wounded."

"Startin with you," Jayne said to Simon, raising his voice to be heard over the girl's babbling. "While you can still work."

"It's just a scratch," the boy said, touching his cheek. "It won't interfere with my ability to-"

Jayne seized Simon's wrist and brought the boy's hand up between them at eye level. "Talkin bout that." He held it there long enough for the doctor to notice the scalloped semicircular tear in the web between thumb and forefinger, then released him. "You get bit in a fight, it allus gets infected. People's mouths is _dirty_."

A minute later, Simon grimaced – not at his injuries, but at his sister's sudden silence and panicked expression as she stared at the approaching needle. "Hold her tight." Jayne applied both hands and considerable weight to River's arm and heaving shoulders while the doctor shot her up.

Half a minute later, Mal said, "When's it gonna start working?"

Simon watched his sister squirming silently in her restraints, looking at nothing. "It should have already."

"Hit her again."

"Captain…"

"I know you didn't give her all you could. Finish this."

The doctor wouldn't meet his eyes. "I don't know what effect it will have combined with the other drug in her system."

Mal grabbed the boy's shirt front – no roughup, just to hold his attention and steer him. He brought their faces close. "You put her down, get her to her room, bind her to her bed. Make sure she can't reach one hand with the other."

The boy's look was painful to see. "For how long?"

"Till she's over this." Mal released him. "_Look_ at her. That ain't your little sister right now. That's a wild animal. And I do _not_ let wild animals run free on my ship. Jayne need to pull up his shirt to show you why? She's not getting a chance to lay hands on a gun or a blade in this condition."

Simon studied his sister's rocking head and jittering limbs as he prepared another injection. "I might need help with her in the mess and the bathroom."

"Doc. I said she's confined to her bed till she's over this. _Think_. Just a moment's distraction at the wrong time is all she'd need to get away from you and melt into the walls. Then we'd all spend the next six weeks workin and movin about in pairs, and sleeping behind locked doors with guns in our hands."

River spoke up again, in the same nonsense talk as before, only now her voice was frantic and pleading. Mal held his voice steady. "Feed her by hand, or by tube. I'm sure a doctor knows what to do for a patient can't use the bathroom. Any supplies you need, we'll pick up at our next stop."

He watched the needle go in and the plunger run home. River's eyes closed, but her head and limbs still stirred in unquiet sleep. "All right. Get her secure, and tend yourselves." He turned to leave. His shoulder thumped the jamb on his way out.

-0-

"What was that jabber? What was she sayin?" Jayne had carried the unconscious girl to her room, and he held her in his arms, her head on his shoulder, while her brother made her bed ready. He could feel his cheek and nose swelling, and doubted he'd be seeing out his left eye tomorrow if he didn't get a cold pack on it soon. That discomfort was nothing compared to the fear that gripped him when he looked at her still face, or remembered the way she'd been when they'd cornered her in the infirmary. The feel of her now, so light and frail and helpless as a newborn kitten, afeared him in a way that being shot at had never done. _No denying it, Jayne Cobb, _he told himself._ Don't know just how long it's been coming, or where you're headed with her, but she's yours now. And she's in trouble deep._

Simon studied her as well, his face a mask of anguish as he cinched a strap around her mattress and attached the wrist restraints to it. "I don't know. I have some Greek and Latin from my medical studies, and some Chinese curses I mostly picked up from the crew. She was fluent in four languages before she went to the Academy." He moved his head in a shrug, or maybe just a twitch. "Or it might not be a language at all."

"Great," he muttered. "Maybe we need the Shepherd in here to do an exorcism."

Simon stiffened.

"Sorry. I'm just shook. It ain't every day your little…" He swallowed the word _sweetheart_; it had more than one meaning where he was raised, but he'd never heard it used but one way since he'd left home. "Ain't every day your little friend turns into a Reaver."

The boy nodded, accepting. "Thanks for helping me with her."

Jayne laid her in the bed, and watched Simon strap her wrists down at her sides. "Gonna need more help than that, maybe."

Simon stroked the girl's pale forehead. "I'll feed her and clean up after her."

"Not what I was talkin bout." Jayne waited until River's brother turned his head to face him. "You didn't tell Mal the worst of it." The boy didn't answer, but the way he stilled told Jayne he was on the right track. "You said the drugs you're feedin her weren't made for what's wrong with her, that they might just be close enough to do her good. You can't be sure what this stuff will do to her. But you know it's meant ta make permanent changes." He watched her struggling in the grip of a bad, bad dream, sweat beading on her upper lip and plastering her hair to her temples, and fought down something he couldn't put a name to that would have left him feeling weak and stupid. He couldn't afford that right now. "Truth is, you don't know for sure if she'll ever come out of this."

"We'll know in six weeks at the latest," Simon said quietly. "When it metabolizes."

"Yuh. And then? If she's not back to normal crazy?" He lowered his voice. "She wouldn't wanna live like this."

The silence stretched as the two of them avoided each other's eyes and watched River stirring in her unquiet sleep. Finally, Jayne said, "Time comes, judge her chances like a doctor, not a brother. Give me a nod, and I'll help her." _And then I'll leave the ship,_ he thought._ Even if the womenfolk forgave me, I couldn't meet their eyes ever again._

"No." Simon locked eyes with him. "If that time comes, I'll do it. If I lost her, I couldn't stay here, no matter how it happened."

-0-

"Merciful God," Inara said. "It's been three days. How can she _not_ be too hoarse to scream?"

Mal tried to pull his attention from the faint sounds of terror and misery drifting up to the galley from passenger quarters. "Thought you were a Buddhist."

"I am. And pious. I don't blaspheme my own Deity." She sipped her tea, galley fare in a chipped mug rather than the fancy brew and service she stocked aboard her shuttle. "The poor thing. Surely she can't go on like this much longer. Can't Simon do something for her?"

"Well, he could keep her drugged insensible for six weeks." He feigned an interest in the apple he was slicing onto a small plate. "Doubt it's safe. And a course he wouldn't know if she came out of it early. Guess that's important for next time."

"Next time." She looked away briefly. "I don't think I could find the courage."

He finished and tossed the core towards the receptacle reserved for fixings for Kaylee's still. "From what I could tell, she's willing to take her chances. And maybe she won't remember any of this. Like a bad dream, over when she wakes."

"I meant Simon. Experimenting on her like that."

"Ah. Well, I spose he's seen all manner of unpleasantness, bein a doctor in a big Core World hospital and all." He slid the plate across the table to her. "You want this? Don't know why I cut it up. I'm not particular hungry."

She picked up a slice in three delicate, tapered fingers. "You haven't been 'particularly hungry' for three days." She brought it within a thumb's width of his nose. "In the mouth or up the nose, your choice."

Startled, he opened his mouth and she slid the apple slice in. The feel of her fingertips on his lips was beyond describing, and he almost choked on his food. He looked on her in wonder while she watched him chew with her chin propped on her fist and her elbow on the table. Inara was a lot of things, but playful wasn't one of them. He swallowed and said, "I'm, ah, glad you changed your mind about leaving."

"I haven't," she said, the good humor gone from her face. "My sense of urgency is a bit lessened, is all." She stood and went to the sink to rinse her fingers. "Sihnon is three stops away, if I understand our itinerary. My rent will be up about the same time."

-0-

Simon woke with a start to find himself on the exam table in sickbay. He'd come in to dress his wound while River slept, and perhaps grab a bite from the galley to take back. How he'd ended up on the table, he couldn't remember. But a bleary glance at the wall clock told him he'd been out for four hours. River's medication must have worn off by now, but he didn't hear her shrieking and crying as she had every time she'd regained consciousness – or whatever one might call her undrugged state. Feeling panic rise, he hurried back to passenger quarters.

He slid open the door to River's room. She was sleeping quietly, but not alone. Kaylee looked up from a doze in a chair next to the bed, startled. Her hand was in River's, gripped tight; a thread of blood ran from the palm of the little redhead's hand and down her wrist.

She tracked his gaze. "It's nothin, she just needs her nails trimmed down some. They're so pretty, like jewels. Wish I could grow em out to my fingertips without breaking them on something."

He gently prized Kaylee's hand from his sister's, very conscious of the feel of the little mechanic's fingers. It was the first time he'd touched her since he'd wakened beside her a month before, and he cringed at the memory.

She must have felt his flinch, or guessed his thought, because she pulled her hand away. "Just a little puncture, like I said. Done ten times worse with a screwdriver."

"I should take you to the infirmary."

"No need." The wary look in her eyes made his heart ache. "I need doctoring, for sure I'll come to you." She looked away and rested her eyes on River. "Hope you don't mind me bein here. I was just outside and heard her whimper. I knew you couldn't be in here, not with her carryin on like that. I just couldn't pass by."

He swallowed. "Not at all. Thank you. You… it was kind, Kaylee."

She shrugged. "You can't be here every minute. You need food and rest, and you got a job same as everyone. And you just plain need time away, so you don't go crazy. I'd help more if you'd let me. We all would."

"I'll keep that in mind." He stepped to the doorway and put a hand on the door. "For now, though, I think I need to examine her. So…"

She nodded and stood. When she passed through the doorway, they both turned sideways to avoid touching, and averted their eyes.

-0-

_Serenity_ put down at local sunrise on a desert plain littered with big outcroppings of rock that stuck out of the sea of sand like volcanic islands. Wash nestled the little freighter among a group of sharp peaks close-spaced as teeth. From the bridge, Captain Reynolds watched the pilot drop his ship into the deep shadow between the crags without the aid of a beacon or any landing lights but the dim floods used for outside work. He smiled to himself once again over the lucky catch he'd made when Hoban Washburn had signed with them, and how well things had worked out for the bait as well. Dust billowed around the ship just before touchdown, but Wash brought her down with just enough forward momentum to keep the intakes and windows clear, and a minute after the engines wound down, _Serenity _was invisible to anyone a mile away. Mal ordered the ship powered down to further reduce their chances of discovery. This little world was quiet enough, but he had extra reason to worry about the Feds lately, and he wasn't wholly sure of the people they'd come to meet.

Past few months, their little enterprise had found itself in a right peculiar situation: they'd been slowly going broke while awash in job offers.

_Serenity's_ crew had always done occasional work as hired muscle; a lot of former Browncoats and ex-soldiers did, out here where folks often had to buy their own protection. But the set-to at Heart of Gold, and especially the one at Niska's skyplex, had given them a certain unlooked-for reputation. Niska's humiliation hadn't damaged his status among the unsavory element, really – no one who'd ever dealt with the wicked old crime boss doubted _his_ reputation – but the people who'd smashed down his front door and walked over his private troops to take back what he'd stolen from them had cemented their repute as people who took crap off nobody.

Well and good, Mal thought, if that had been as far as it went, but it wasn't, because folks wouldn't believe (and rightly so) that an ordinary tramp-freighter crew could and would do what they'd done. The Cortex enabled news to travel fast, but it didn't guarantee accuracy; despite Niska's attempts to shush it up, the story had spread, and got wilder with every retelling.

Recently, Mal had spent an hour in a dockside saloon, quietly standing at the bar nursing a drink while he waited for a potential client. A conversation from a nearby table had pricked up his ears, because the men were talking about 'that bunch' from the Firefly newly docked at the port. He'd learned that its captain and mate were diehard Independents with a history of violence, who'd as soon shoot a Fed as look at him. The rest of the crew were mysteriously overqualified for jobs on a tramp freighter, from the pilot who drove it with military-level skill, and the big well-armed deckhand who met every stranger on the ramp, to the 'passenger' without a destination, a spy or confidence agent it was rumored, who liked to dress as a preacher. And it was said that witnesses had caught glimpses of others aboard not included on the crew or passenger manifests.

Even _Serenity_ had got the spin treatment. Rumor had it the old girl wasn't really a Firefly Class Three at all, but a salvaged _Cerberus_-class: a sort of corvette, assault boat, and all-around troublemaker from the Independent Navy built on a hull derived from the Class Three, and closely resembling it. But, the rumor went on, _Serenity_ hadn't been fully decommissioned; at least once, its pilot had threatened to turn a building full of people into 'a crater' using the ship's armament.

Mal had felt ice travel up his spine as he'd eavesdropped. Stories of dangerous and mysterious folk who didn't think the War was over were bound to find their way to Alliance-friendly ears, he'd thought. This would mean having to operate farther out on the Rim, where the central government's presence was thinner. And that very lack of government would make every job they could find riskier, legitimate or otherwise.

Then one of the men had confided to his tablemates that _Serenity's_ captain was a rake and a swashbuckler who'd put a master swordsman in the dust on Persephone in a duel over the favors of a Companion.

Mal had snorted into his glass. Companions loved every man they accepted payment from, and none they didn't; who knew better than him? But winning the heart of a Companion was every man's fantasy, it seemed.

The small sound had drawn the attention of one of the men, who took a single glance at Mal's duster and spoke some low and urgent words to his tablemates. Conversation had dwindled almost to a halt as Mal tossed down the rest of his drink and walked out.

Since shortly after the skyplex raid, their offers of legitimate cargo, and even low-profile petty crime, had almost dried up. No one with that sort of work to offer wanted a share of the attention the 'Reynolds bunch' was drawing lately. Instead, Mal and crew ashore were constantly being approached by oily characters in need of ruthless people with skill in murder and mayhem. He refused even to hear them out, and instructed his people to brush them off as well. Whatever else _Serenity_ and her crew were, they weren't mercenaries. Mercenaries couldn't afford consciences, and besides, their lifespans were short. Money wasn't worth his people's lives – or souls, he might have said, but everyone knew he wasn't a religious man.

The contact they were waiting for was a little different. He had unspecified goods to transport to Halifax, a moon in the Athens system. He had also selected _Serenity_ by their damnable reputation, but his job offer required only that they be prepared to do violence to keep his cargo safe. That prompted some questions about the cargo they'd be expected to risk their lives for. Instead of answering, the man's agent had abruptly raised his offer – doubled it, in fact. Mal had been ready to refuse right then, but their prospect had offered an advance, non-refundable, if they'd meet his associate to discuss the deal further. The money being offered was suspicious but too good to turn down without reason.

_Serenity_ had come to this meet with no agreement but a promise to hear the man out. Mal only hoped the discussion wouldn't get too pointy.

-0-

After Mal stalked off the bridge, Jayne stood by Wash's console and looked out on the floodlit landscape. "Powers. Who'd ever think ya could put a ship down in a spot this tight? Musta took some paint off on the way down."

"As if this bucket had any paint left on her. And I never got within twenty meters of anything hard or pointy."

"'Twenty meters.' Why you Core Worlders gotta have your own way of measuring everything, anyway? A day's walk is the same whether you measure it in klicks or miles."

"I'm sure a day's walk for you isn't the same for me. Neither's the width of your thumb, or the length of your foot or your arm. That's where Rim measures come from."

"Well, they're standard now, ain't they? A foot's the same length anywhere on the Rim. And most a the units folks use every day are near the same in Core measure, too. A liter's a quart, near enough, and a meter's a yard. Five klicks is three miles, twenty-five centimeters is ten inches. Big deal. Why you got to be different?"

"It's not really about the units." Wash flipped off the outside lights, turning the view out the windows to ink. "Metric's easier to calculate with. Everything's in powers of ten, instead of twelve inches to the foot and five thousand two hundred eighty feet to the mile, thirty-two ounces to the quart and four quarts to the gallon. It takes a computer to make sense of all that."

"Hmph. Central Worlds got computers for everything from traffic control to flush toilets. Every kid older'n six has a little handheld that's smarter than our autopilot. Why the hell you need to make things easier to figure? No, it's just another case of forcing your way of doin things down other folks' throats."

"Careful, big man. You're starting to sound like the captain."

"Doesn't mean I'm wrong. Alliance even has to bring their own money out here. Two Alliance credits to three platinum, or some such. The ruttin coins got pictures of people I never heard of, and they rattle instead of ringin when you toss em on the counter. What kinda go-se is that for a man to carry around in his pocket?"

"_Wash._" Mal's voice over the intercom. "_Jayne still admiring the view up there? We got company comin soon._"

Wash keyed the mike. "He just left." The pilot keyed off and grinned at him a moment before his expression changed. "You're going outside?"

"Sure, soon's I grab some tools." By which he meant a rifle and pistol.

"Ever been here before?"

"I don't even know the name of this rock." Jayne was put off by Wash's question and the odd way the pilot was looking at him.

"You're not going out there in that shirt."

He looked down at it: a button front, one of two he owned, and the brightest. "What's wrong with it?"

"You can't set foot on a strange world in a red shirt. Everybody knows that."

"Why not? And who's 'everybody'?"

Wash shrugged. "You know, everybody. It's bad luck."

Jayne scoffed. "Well, _that's_ real scientific. You're bout the last I'd ever expect to hang onto some dumb superstition." He headed for his room.

-0-

Mal stood at the bottom of the open ramp with his boots in the sand, listening to the faint whine of an approaching vehicle echoing from the rock faces. "This is bout the time our man said he'd show, so it's likely him. That speaks well for his intentions, I suppose. I want you two looking sharp just the same. Jayne, if I send you to the bridge to check on Wash, take up sentry on the catwalks and cover the door. If I tell you you're excused, hightail it to the bridge and make sure Wash and Kaylee got us ready for a jackrabbit takeoff. And if I call you 'Brother,' start shootin."

"'Brother'. Yeah, that'd pull the gun outta my holster, alright."

Zoë looked down the dim and narrow pass with cool eyes. It was still early; the sun was lighting up the rock faces, but it wouldn't touch the floor of their landing site for a while yet. "And me, sir?"

"Like you won't know what to do before me." The engine sound abruptly got louder and less echoey as a hoversled slid into view. It approached _Serenity_ dead slow, giving them a good look at it and the three men in its open passenger area. "Here he comes. Be polite, now. This fella seems prosperous, and we could use a decent job. Don't scare him off."

"Right now, I'm rememberin them wobble-headed dolls with affection," Jayne said. "Things get any leaner, the cows might even start lookin good."

The vehicle settled to the sand fifty yards from the ramp. One of the men called out, "Sitting out the dust storm?"

"And the wind that follows," Mal said, completing the code phrase he'd been given.

The men climbed out of the flitter, throwing open their coats to show they were unarmed. They showed no surprise or unease that Mal and company were armed and kept their weapons. When they drew near, one nodded. "Captain Reynolds, by my man's description." He turned to Zoë with a tiny smile. "And you're the first mate, Zoë Alleyne. Also just as described."

"Apparently not just," she replied, breaking her usual rule of keeping silent and letting Mal talk during negotiations. "It's Zoë Washburn now."

"Pardon." He turned to Jayne. "You're a lucky man."

Jayne took a small step away from the first mate. "Gor. Sooner bed a rattler."

"Now, dear," Zoë said dryly, "no need to air our marital problems in front of company."

"This ain't her husband," Mal said, laying hands on hips, one very near his revolver. "Friends, to business. Who are you, and what sort of cargo you offerin that needs to be carried by the likes of us?"

The man stared up at the ship's gooseneck hanging overhead, unconcerned about any danger posed by the three armed crew at the ramp. "I'd prefer to answer those questions a bit at a time, Captain. I need to satisfy myself about you as well. As to who I am, the name is Sessions, Albert Sessions, and I'd be surprised if you ever heard of me. Which is one reason I've flashed a lot of platinum at the start, to establish some credit with you."

"Well, it got us here, right enough, but that's all."

"Understood. You got a problem with hauling cargo that can't be shipped legally?"

Mal shifted. "In principle, no. Depends on what law we'd break, and whose. I step careful around the Alliance."

Sessions tilted his head. "Step quick to stay ahead of them, more like. Those settlers on New Beginnings who got charged with insurrection, they didn't talk much, but the only ship put in at the right time to deliver those guns was a Firefly with a fake registry beacon. And you led a series of raids on Core World hospitals and cleaned out their drug lockers, I heard."

Mal gave a small shake of his head. "That's what you heard, the story's grown some in the telling."

"Did it just once then, I'd guess. The first time. Smart." Sessions nodded. "The last couple crews who tried it never got past the front door. So you'll tweak the Alliance's nose if the price is right."

"Other things bein equal," Mal said uneasily. Sessions was dancing around too much. This was starting to smell like a bad deal. "Even the Alliance has some laws that make sense to respect. We won't be hauling atom bombs or poached organs or anything like, not for any money."

Sessions' face smoothed out. "I look like a man who'd do that kind of thing?"

Mal kept his hand from inching toward his gun. "Far as I know, I never met a man who'd do that kind of thing. No way to compare."

The man seemed to be thinking it over. "Captain, I've got a cargo worth worlds to the Alliance, but not much to anybody else. I need transportation that knows the quiet ways from place to place, but someone I can rely on not to sell it to the Feds."

"Crooked, but the right kind of crooked," Mal said.

"No offense."

"None taken. But I want to know more about this cargo before I say yea or nay. And even if I agree, I won't promise the lid won't come off the box if I suspect you've been less than truthful."

"That can't happen, Captain. If you don't feel comfortable working with me, walk away, and all you owe me for my advance is your silence." He shifted his feet. "We might be talking awhile yet. Would you mind if we sit down somewhere?"

Mal turned his head slightly towards his 'public relations' man. "Jayne, go to the bridge and check on Wash for me, will you?" When he heard the big merc's boots on the stairs, he went on, "Mr. Sessions, I'm not easy about this whole situation. Crates in the hold is all the hospitality I'm willin to risk right now."

"That'll do," the man said. "Just need to get off this leg. Hasn't been right since I took a bullet in the thigh during the War. Broke the femur. Standing's worse than running on it, I swear."

That grabbed Mal's attention. "Alliance or Independent?"

The man grinned. "Would it make a difference?"

Mal shrugged. "It might, if I was the one shot you."

Sessions shook his head. "Can't think of anything unlikelier."

-0-

Simon knew he was cutting it close, but he was just too bone-weary to think clearly or move with alacrity; he'd only gotten ten hours' sleep in the last four days, and he was living in a fog. He'd shuffled to the galley for a meal and nearly dropped his face into his bowl between bites. He shoveled cold rice and protein cubes into his mouth and chewed mechanically, watching the time slide by with unbelievable speed. River's meds would be wearing off very soon, and she hadn't taken well to being restrained the last time she'd wakened. He had to get back.

He went out the wrong doorway from the kitchen, and had started down the fore companionway before he realized his mistake. He shrugged mentally and went on down the stairs, resigning himself to the longer route past the sickbay.

Practically sleepwalking, he smelled fresh air, and found himself on the floor of the cargo bay without remembering how he'd got there – another wrong turn, he supposed. He saw the open cargo hatch, and dimly remembered that the ship had landed somewhere, part of a job or something. Then he saw the group at the bottom of the ramp.

The captain and Zoë were meeting with three men at the bottom of _Serenity's _ramp. The man in the middle was dressed no differently than his companions, but he was doing all the talking and was clearly in charge. Something in the sound of the leader's voice stirred Simon's unease through his fog of exhaustion, and he cautiously moved forward a few steps for a better look.

The sight of the man's face froze Simon in his tracks. He'd seen him before, and more than once. The first time, on Osiris, dressed in a modest business suit; his was the first face Simon had seen when he'd had the blindfold whisked from his eyes at the start of his earliest negotiations for River's rescue from the Academy. The second time, months later on Persephone, the man had been in a dockworker's coveralls when he'd presented Simon with the storage box containing his sister in cryo.

"Hssst."

The hissing sound and a movement on the catwalk above the cargo bay floor finally caught his attention. Jayne stood on the catwalk, rifle in hand, urgently gesturing him back. But he couldn't move.

River suddenly screamed, clearly audible even from her room deep inside the ship; all seven people present started at the sound. Then she cried, "No... let go… _no_..." and began groaning and huffing like a laboring machine, no doubt fighting her restraints. "_Stop!_ Leave me _alone!_" Simon was torn between a need to go to her and another to learn what this man was doing here, and what he knew.

The visitor's mouth thinned. "That the sort of trade you're in these days, Reynolds? I heard better of you."

Zoë didn't move, but something indefinable about her changed, and Simon was sure she was contemplating violence. The captain stiffened, but his voice stayed offhand. "Sick passenger, Sessions, not merchandise. Another reason not to let you past the hold. Our doc says it'll pass, but right now she's delirious and a mite dangerous."

The man's eyes flicked into the open cargo door and rested on him, standing frozen in the middle of the bay. But Sessions' expression didn't change, and Simon thought he'd gone unrecognized until the man said, "That case, shouldn't your doctor be with her?"


	2. Telling Tales

Following Captain Reynolds' orders, Simon saw to his sister and returned to the cargo hold. Sessions and the captain were seated on crates facing each other. Their visitor sat with one leg stretched out stiffly in front of him. Zoë and Sessions' companions stood nearby, watchful, and Jayne remained on the catwalk with his rifle butt on his hip.

The captain saw Simon and beckoned, then pointed to a crate. "It's clear you two know each other, but he won't talk without you here. I find that somewhat of a comfort, shows he thinks a man's trust is worth keeping. But I want to know how you came to be in cahoots."

Simon sat heavily. "He's a member of the Underground, the group that got River out of the Academy."

"Technically, no," the man said. "Sympathizer, but I was hired for the job, glad as I was to do it." He turned to Simon. "But I got a feeling things went to hell after I gave that box up to you. You opened it early, didn't you? Why didn't you follow my gorram directions?" He scowled. "I understand you being eager, but did you think I told you to keep her cold for another week just for the hell of it? With me not knowing where you were taking her, or how soon you'd arrive?"

A horrid suspicion took root. Simon glanced at the captain and saw a matching sentiment reflected on his face. "It was out of my hands. Why was it important?"

"We put her in that box," Sessions said, "but she was in cryo when we stole her. They always chill the kids after surgery, sometimes for weeks. Cryo slows the healing process, eases the shock or something, lets their minds adjust to the changes." He turned his head towards the passage leading to the infirmary and passenger country, now silent. "If she'd stayed in the full time, and you'd flushed their damn drugs out of her… well, she might have got confused from time to time, and for sure she'd have been witless when she first warmed up. But that would have been the worst of it. That poor girl's paying a hell of a price for your impatience, I'm thinking."

"It wasn't impatience. It couldn't be helped." Simon's voice sounded faint in his own ears. He kept his face turned from Captain Reynolds, and concentrated on Sessions. "What are you doing here? Another job for the Underground?"

"No," the man said. "Another client. I'm not at liberty to say more." He bent his stiff leg, flexing it slowly.

"And I presume you're not at liberty to tell the captain what the cargo is, either."

"No." Sessions held Simon's eyes. "But I'm sure you'll find the container familiar." He turned to the captain and held up a hand. "Don't ask. I'll only say that the box arrived here from Persephone, which is the Underground's way station for everything headed for the Rim. The shipper got in trouble with the authorities here over something unrelated, I'm told, and the package got stranded. That's where you and yours come in. I've been instructed to offer you two thousand platinum with no haggling, payable on delivery at Halifax."

-0-

After Sessions dropped his little bomb and made his offer, Mal dismissed the doctor and spent a few more minutes with the agent. Mal agreed to take the package and deliver it to Halifax. He was still a bit uneasy about hauling unknown cargo for a stranger, but his misgivings weren't enough to make him turn down a job that made fair to put them back on their feet in a big way. Two thousand platinum would fill their tanks, their parts bins, and their larder, with plenty left over for joy money. And if, as Sessions hinted, the box contained another runaway from that damned Academy… well, it wasn't much atonement, but it was something, and not a chance Mal could pass by easily. Sessions told him the package would be delivered to the ship in two days, and shook hands on the deal.

After Sessions and his people left, Mal trailed Simon through the hatch leading to the infirmary and passenger country. He wasn't sure if talk or space was what the boy needed right now, but Simon Tam was crew, and Mal felt a need to see to him and do something if he could.

He'd thought Simon would head for his sister's room, but the doc had turned into the infirmary instead. He poked his head in, and saw the young man standing with his back to the door, opening and closing drawers as if counting his inventory. The boy's stiff posture told the captain that Simon knew he was watching him. He gave a little throat-clearing cough. "Doc?"

The boy didn't turn, or pause in his examination of his stores. "Yes, Captain? You have an order for me, a duty to perform?" Not a trace of emotion in the boy's voice.

Mal swallowed, for once unsure.

"Believe it or not, Captain, I'm no stranger to anger. I've lost my temper many times. And I've been… unreasonable, from time to time. I know there was no malice towards my sister in what you did, and you'd make it right if you could." Simon shut the last drawer very softly, and rested his forehead on the glass door of the cabinet above. "But I'm quite sure I couldn't look at you right now and stay reasonable. So I would take it as a great personal favor if you would get the hell out of my infirmary."

-0-

Five minutes' walk from the grounded ship, Jayne said, "This is far enough." A quick glance behind showed that _Serenity_ was out of sight behind a rocky outcrop. He pulled a pistol from his belt. "Been waitin for a chance like this for a while now, Three Percent." He passed it over, butt-first. "You remember where the safety's at, right?"

"Yes." Simon gripped the weapon with none of the namby-pamby reluctance one might expect of some Core World dandy. "I remember which end the bullet comes out of, too." He glanced at Shepherd Book, who was also armed. "But that's about all."

Jayne shook his head. "Even a fella can't hit a barn from ten paces can be some use in a firefight. Most a the bullets ever fired never put a hole in anybody. But if you can make the other guys keep their heads down and spoil their aim, you're doin okay. That's what cover fire's all about. But you gotta at least _look_ like you know how to shoot." He drew another weapon from his belt and extended his arm as he turned sideways, pointing the gun at a clump of stunted trees thirty yards away. He squeezed off six rounds in three seconds, and the top half of one of the four-inch trunks tipped over and fell to the ground. "Now you. Just like that."

"Uh, suggestion?" Wash looked at him with raised eyebrows. "If he does it like that, he won't look like he knows what he's doing. He'll look comatose, because the barrel will come right up and poleax him. He doesn't have arms as thick as most men's thighs, or weigh a hundred kilos either." The pilot drew and aimed for the same cluster, his right arm slightly bent and his left hand cupping the pistol's butt. He fired six rounds as well. Bits of wood sprang off the trees after four of them. "Ah, the thrill of the slaughter. Trees, fear me."

"That's how the Alliance teaches grown men to shoot, eh?"

Wash safed his weapon and holstered it. "Well, that's how they teach their _pilots_ to shoot. They don't teach their infantrymen to fly at all."

"Spose it's good enough, firin from cover," he grudged. "Doc, that piece you're holdin has a heavy frame, a small bore, and a long cartridge. Get used to the kick, and it should be easy to aim, no matter what world you're on."

"Why would that…"

"He means the pistol has a high muzzle velocity," Book explained. "Fires a bullet in a flat trajectory. Otherwise, you'd have to learn to make little adjustments in elevation to compensate for different gravity on every world."

"That an intel-lectual observation, Shepherd?" Jayne put his last four rounds into the clump and dropped another sapling. "Or you hunt squirrels at more than one abbey?" Without waiting for an answer, he said to Simon, "Do it."

The boy held the weapon the way Wash had, and aimed for the trees. The first round brought the barrel up halfway to vertical, and Simon winced. The little cluster of trees showed no indication where the bullet had gone. Jayne just hoped nobody was any closer than a mile downrange.

Simon gripped the weapon more firmly, resumed his stance, and squeezed off another round. This time, the barrel rose only slightly. But the little woodlot still didn't stir.

"Don't squint. Look at the target, not the gun. Try not to-" Jayne looked at Book. "What's the word?"

"Anticipate?"

"Right. Just let the shot kinda surprise you."

By the time the doc inserted his second clip, he'd scored three hits. "I'm rather more accustomed to preserving life than taking it."

"All the more reason to learn how to shoot straight, so you don't gutshoot a man aiming for his kneecap. Ain't that right, Shepherd?"

The preacher said slowly, "Power of any sort should be applied as judiciously as possible, including lethal force, I'd say."

Jayne frowned. While _Serenity _was grounded, waiting for a delivery from their client, he'd invited Simon out for some target practice. Simon had been strange all morning, and even stiffer than usual, like some gorram machine; plain as plain something new was eating him. Jayne had taken him outside, hoping to talk to the boy far from prying eyes and ears. But the Shepherd and Wash had invited themselves along, for no reason he could see, and it nettled. "You're up, preacher. Show us what you got."

Book gave a small apologetic smile and raised the pistol he'd borrowed from the ship's locker. The smile disappeared when Jayne placed a hand atop the barrel. "We all seen ya shoot with your dander up at the skyplex, Shepherd. Don't be coy. Show us what we can count on if we need to." Jayne dropped his hand.

The Shepherd raised the pistol and fired a single shot. A thumb-sized branch dropped off a trunk. He fired again, and hewed another off the same tree. He emptied the clip, taking careful, measured shots, and dropped a limb hardly bigger than the bullet with every one. "A relaxing pastime, is all," the old man said as he returned the weapon to his hip. "A few of the brethren showed an interest, and we formed a sort of club. Just for sport, of course."

"Of course," Wash said faintly. "Just the thing to loosen up after a hard day of chanting. Like the way you hammered that lawman when you first came aboard."

"The monks at Southdown Abbey pursue a wide variety of pursuits besides marksmanship and fisticuffs. We're famous for our mastery of horticulture, landscaping, and music, to name a few. The Abbey's gardens and choral society are famous. What about you, Simon? What did you do with the time MedAcad left you?"

"Before I started looking for a way to get to River?" Simon shrugged. "Social gatherings, mostly. There were clubs at school for the ambitious up-and-comers to network. When I was home from school, Mother and Father always filled my calendar so I touched base with all the right people. I never turned down a lunch invitation or missed a party. Wouldn't do to let an unintentional snub create an impediment to my career." He sighted on the now rather tatty clump of trees. "They're not bad people. Not my parents, not any of them. They're just… comfortable." He squeezed off a shot, and bark sprang from a trunk.

_But they wrote you off, soon as you slipped out of that corral of a life they kept you in,_ Jayne thought. _Bet if they'd been there when she was about to be burned alive by that mob, neither of them would have climbed up on the pyre to stop it, or stayed up there when they saw it wouldn't save her, just to put arms around her so she didn't have to die alone._

He remembered that irritating little rescue mission: _Serenity's _belly hatch opening to show brother and sister staked out on a pile of scrap wood, waiting for the fire. He remembered feeling a sort of sour satisfaction at their predicament that turned to amazement when he saw only the crazy girl was tied up. A few weeks ago, he and Simon Tam had had a real man-to-man over a liter of Kaylee's moonshine, and spoken to each other in a way they'd never come close to in their year sharing a ship. That night, Jayne had been surprised to learn that he'd come to like the little pipsqueak. _They didn't deserve you, or your sister either._

Five minutes later, Wash said, "I'm out."

"Me too." Book turned to Jayne and Simon. "You about finished?"

Jayne was flabbergasted. "You come clear out here for target practice, and you only brung a clip each?" Worse still, the pilot was flat out lying: he'd only fired six rounds from a ten-round clip.

"Well, the walk was good for me," Wash said, making a show of looking around. "Pretty far from the ship, aren't we. I wonder if anyone aboard can even hear the shots."

"It _is_ rather secluded," Book observed. "A wounded man would be a long way from aid. An accident could turn tragic."

Jayne felt his temper rising. "You come out here to keep an eye on us?" He glared at the Shepherd. "You thought I might shoot him?"

Book shook his head. "Not really."

Wash coughed. "Uh, actually, we thought _he_ might shoot _you._"

He and Simon turned to face each other. The boy's poker face collapsed first, screwing up into helpless laughter. Jayne grinned, at him and their slack-jawed audience, at least until it seemed to him the laughter had gone on a little long; then he started to worry. But he kept a smile on his face while Simon gathered his wits again.

The doc wiped his eyes. "Oh. Oh. Thank you. I needed a good laugh, it's been forever."

Jayne crossed his arms. "Bet you'll get another when they start explainin."

Book turned cool eyes on the boy. "You've been under a terrible strain, young man. Men trapped and stressed by forces beyond their control often look for someone to blame their troubles on. Your sister spent what might be the last lucid hours of her life in his bunk. And Kaylee's been spending more time with him than with you lately."

"And you missed breakfast this morning. That always puts _me_ out of sorts," Wash added.

The boy's face stiffened. "Thank you for your concern. For both our sakes. But he's as safe here as on my table."

"Sure am relieved to hear _that,_"Jayne said. "I figure bout a coin-flip chance a gettin shot before this job's over. Nice to be able to count on my medic."

Simon looked pointedly at him. "How many clips do we have left?"

"Four for you, six for me." He turned to the two men. "We're gonna be out here a while yet. You might as well head back, get outta the sun."

When Book and Wash were spots of color in the distance, the boy turned to him as he pulled the clip and counted his rounds. "They _do_ make a point."

Jayne did the same. "I didn't know how to stop her. Not tryin ta shift blame, just tellin it straight." She'd shared his bunk, right enough, but they'd only talked together for half a shift until she'd felt the crazy coming over her again and left. But everyone on the crew thought he'd plucked River's flower that night, and he was sure denials would do him no good. But with her brother, at least, he felt obliged to try at every chance. "I stole your time with her, I know that. But nothin else."

"I know. I don't hold you at fault for anything." Simon sighted on the trees but didn't fire. "There's no blaming Kaylee, either."

"Now wait a minute, doc. We-"

Simon fired three shots. A tree limb leaned over lazily and touched the ground. "Things haven't been right between us since that night together. I gained a friend, but I lost a love, it seems."

Looking back on it, Jayne thought, getting Kaylee and Simon passing-out drunk and bundling them together naked in her hammock hadn't been one of his better ideas. It had seemed a clever plan when he was drunk, which described a lot of decisions he'd made in the past that had ended up costing him one way or another. He thought of telling the boy the truth, but he didn't understand how his scheme to push them together had backfired, and he didn't want to make things worse. He sighted on a limb. "I don't get it. I'd a thought you two would be singin together like birds the next morning." He fired three shots and didn't hit a thing.

The boy made a disgusted sound. "How _could_ she? After what I did?" He talked for ten minutes while Jayne listened with growing amazement. "She may not know about courting and marriage customs among the Twelve Families," Simon concluded miserably, "but she knows I did something reprehensible by my own lights. It's no wonder she looks at me like she doesn't know what I'll do next."

A flicker of light on the polished frame of his pistol caught Jayne's eye. He turned casually towards the ship and caught a twinkle high on an outcrop. A scope, possibly, but more likely binoculars. Wash, he was sure; somehow Jayne doubted the Shepherd would give himself away so easily. "Simon."

The boy turned to him, alerted by Jayne's rare use of his name. "What is it?"

"Lay your piece on that rock. Then step over here. There's somethin we need to do." When the boy complied, he said, "Hit me. Hard as you can."

"Why-"

"We're bein watched. You are, anyway. They're lookin for you to snap, and they'll keep lookin till you do, which is the surest way to drive somebody crazy I can think of." He put his hands on his hips and shoved his face forward, as if he were daring the boy to do something. "Give it all you got, but on the side a my neck, not my face." He grinned. "We don't wanna bust up your pretty hands."

"I don't want to hurt you."

"As if you could. Come on, city boy. Swing like you mean it." He dropped his voice. "Think of it as payment in advance. You know I'm gonna screw your sister's brains out, she ever gets em back. Don't you?"

The boy drew back like a catapult and launched a fist. Jayne saw it coming, of course, and could have parried or dodged it easy, but he stood like he was rooted to the ground and let the boy's fist keep its appointment with his face. He was pleasantly surprised a moment later to find his elbows in the dust, with the wispy clouds wobbling overhead; Simon Tam might not be schooled in brawling, but he was a damn sight stronger than he looked. When Simon started to kneel, Jayne said, "Stay off your gorram knees! _Stand_ over me, like you're ready to knock me down again if I get up." He put a hand to the side of his jaw. "Told ya not to hit my face. Just got the swelling down on that side, g'rammit."

"Sorry. I wasn't thinking."

"Hmp. Maybe they were right to keep an eye on ya after all. How's your hand?"

"Stiffening up already."

"You oughtta let me give ya some lessons. Bet you'd be a buzz saw in a fight, you only knew what you were doin. Guess we been talkin long enough ta make up. Let's get back to sickbay before they come runnin out." He extended a hand, his left, to spare the boy's injured hand. "Help me up, like a fine Core World gentleman."

Simon led the way back. "Just so you know," he said without turning, "that had more to do with the remark about my sister's brains than your intentions."

Jayne almost rested a hand on Simon's shoulder, and lifted it away at the last moment, surprised at himself. Instead, he just said, "Don't ask me how, Three Percent. But I got a hunch things are all gonna work out."

-0-

Wash, lying prone beside the Shepherd with just their heads above the ridge, lowered his binoculars. "Staged?"

"Staged," Book said firmly. "Maybe the glasses weren't a mistake after all. Who would ever have suspected those two would stand and draw together?" _But that boy is still trouble on its way to happen_, he thought. _Who – or what - has got him tight as a coiled spring?_

"Well." The pilot slid down the ridge before he stood. "I'd say Kaylee and River have something to do with that. Exactly what, I'm not sure I want to know."

-0-

Jayne sat at the galley table with the four pistols they'd used for target practice. He broke the first of them down and started cleaning it.

Kaylee dropped into the seat opposite. "You're sure fussy about keepin those clean."

"Like bein able to depend on em," he said, wiping oil off a part with a clean rag. "You want em to do right by you, you do right by them."

"Like a friendship."

"They're tools, not friends."

"Well, then, how come you named that big rifle? Vera, right?"

He ran a brush down the barrel. "Wasn't me named that one, it was the man I took it off of. I just kept it for a joke, more or less. A man moonbrained enough to name his rifle prolly has a name for his pecker too."

She scoffed and propped an elbow on the table, chin in hand. "You got pretty hands for a man, did I ever tell you that?"

He stopped, a half-assembled gun in his hands. "Pretty?"

"Well, not pretty. Attractive. I like watching you work with em, the way they move when they're doin something they're familiar with, almost like they got a mind of their own." Her lips parted as she stared at them. "Forgot how big they are."

He put down the piece and dropped his hands in his lap. "Somethin on your mind, little Kaylee?"

She stood. "Nothin you're likely to help me with, Jayne Cobb. Tonight, I guess I'm best left to my own devices." She left, headed for crew quarters.

-0-

Simon quietly slid aside the door to his sister's room and shut it behind him. When he turned, he was shocked to see her eyes open, looking at him.

"She's not all there," River said tiredly. "But then again, she doesn't need to be, does she?"

"River?" Simon rushed to her bed and put an arm under her shoulders.

"She missed her birthday."

"What?"

"Been lost in the wilderness for forty years, denied the Promised Land."

Simon took her hand, still cuffed to the bed. "River, it's only been a week."

"Everything's relative. Lorentz-Fitzgerald theory of nightmare existence. She's old now, very old." She looked up at him. "Are you a son or a grandson?"

He smoothed back her hair. "It's your brother. Simon."

"Been moving fast, then." Her eyes drifted shut. "Tired. Old folks need their rest." They opened again. "Jayne?"

"He's not here, mei-"

The door slid aside, and the big man appeared in the doorway. "She's awake?"

"Probably not," she said, eyes already sliding closed again. "Nothing so beautiful could be real. Must be a dream, like the make-believe Reavers that aren't."

"Never thought I'd be glad to hear her talkin nonsense," Jayne said. "We're real enough, little crazy girl."

She smiled faintly at him. "He looks better in red. Brings out the color of his eyes." Then she was out, so quickly that Simon reached for her wrist in alarm. But her pulse was strong and steady.

-0-

Hob Washburn separated strands of cable with his fingertips, examining them carefully by sight and touch. He was lying on the floor of the well under the front of the pilot's console. He'd removed several access panels and had almost wormed his way inside the ship's works as he traced his way through the navigation and drive pod control wiring. The old girl had been a bit quirky after Saffron's first act of sabotage, and the treacherous redhead's second instance of meddling had made things worse. He felt a need to check things over, and with _Serenity_ grounded for another day or so, this seemed the perfect time.

Kaylee had gone through the systems and declared them fixed, but Wash couldn't bring himself to trust that assurance fully. The little prairie chick had a natural gift for machines, but her lack of formal training and her reliance on intuition made for unsatisfactory answers when questioned about her diagnostic procedures. And some of the jackleg repairs forced on her by the quality and scarcity of spares in the parts bins would give any pilot pause. Trusting another man's word that something critical was working properly had once cost Lieutenant Washburn a crushed pelvis, four cracked vertebrae, a broken collarbone, and two years of agony. He squirmed farther into the engineering space under the console, looking for wear or damage.

The work occupied his hands and eyes, but left his mind mostly free to roam. He thought about his earlier conversation with Jayne, and concluded reluctantly that the big merc had a point. He'd called Rim measures arbitrary, but it was handy to have your measuring tools with you all the time, as long as precision was no big deal. And as for metric units… what could be more arbitrary than a unit of distance established as one forty-thousandth of the circumference of a planet light-years away and probably unfit for human life?

He tried to imagine a Class One world so overpopulated that its overburdened environment was near collapse. He'd been raised on a world whose heavy industries threw enough particulates into the upper atmo that the stars were invisible at night, and the sun an unfocused glare in the sky by day. But the terraforming plants kept the air breathable at ground level and the temperatures comfortable; it was a pleasant enough place for twenty million to live on. A world with so many people eating and excreting that even terraforming technology couldn't keep up would have to be home to a billion souls, he thought.

Then he imagined boarding a ship headed for a destination so distant he wouldn't live to see it, to give his unborn grandchildren a chance to walk under an open sky and breathe uncanned air. The desperation hinted at in such a decision was chilling.

He was sure that a fleet of ships couldn't have evacuated more than a tiny fraction of the passengers from that sinking ship; the exodus probably hadn't bought Earth-that-Was a single generation's reprieve. According to history, as recorded in the colony ships' logs, the homeworld had dropped out of communication before the first generation of refugees had grown old. It seemed likely that the planetary system he knew held all the humanity in the 'Verse.

_Maybe_, he thought, _we'll get ambitious enough someday – or crowded enough – to return to Earth-that-Was and terraform it. Wouldn't __that_ _be ironic_.

"This is a surprise." Zoë's voice, on the bridge just above, startled him; he'd thought he was alone. "Don't see you up here much."

Wash barely had time to be puzzled by his wife's statement before he heard Simon answer. "Not when we're in space. I try not to look out any of the windows when we're off-planet. I was just hoping to see the sunset from up here. Where's your husband?"

"Don't know. I expected to find him up here. I suppose he's tinkerin with Kaylee somewhere." Her voice caught. "Well, not with _her_. I mean-"

"I know what you meant. Cobbling together some new secret weapon out of castoff parts. Clever, aren't they? And inventive."

"More than you'll ever know." The smoky note in her voice brought heat to his face, and made him wish they were alone. Then her voice changed. "Simon. If you need to talk to someone, I'd listen."

"No offense, but I doubt I'd find you an impartial listener."

"And maybe that's not what you need. Maybe you need someone to take the captain's side in some honest talk. This is trouble the ship and crew can't afford."

"Zoë, he's safe on my table, if that's what worries you. And I'm sure he's not heartbroken over our lost friendship." A pause. "What he did, it wasn't a reasoned act. For all he knew, that box could have been full of explosives or toxic chemicals or God knows what. He did it because I challenged his authority, gave him orders on his own ship. That's what I'm having trouble accepting, that his wounded pride cost my sister her sanity."

"Doctor, you may be used to giving orders and having them followed, but you plain don't know squat about command. This ship would fall apart without a strong leader pointing us all in the same direction and keeping us going. You challenged his authority, right enough, but it was for all our sakes he showed everyone he was still runnin things and not you. And he did it the quickest way he could think of, before things got out of hand. Now, he might have done it different. I'm sure he would have if he'd known. But I won't apologize for what he did, because right then putting you in your place was as important as air." He heard her sit – in the pilot's chair, by the creak. "He saved my life during the War," she said, as if sharing a secret.

"I've heard some of the stories."

"I'm not talking about the times he pulled me back before I broke a tripwire, or shouted a warning that kept me from walking into a bullet, or fired a shot that put paid to someone had me in his sights. We all did that for one another, too many times for counting to make any sense." The chair creaked again as she shifted. "Before the War, I was career military. Alluquere is a Rim world, but it's better off than most, and just barely prosperous enough to support an armed force, so of course they had to have one. By the time I was eighteen, the Core Worlds were already starting to beat the drum, and Alluquere was looking for recruits. That was my ticket off the farm. Law said only citizens could join, and I'd never set foot on it - I was born and raised in a ship till I was twelve, then on Sutter till I left home - but that ship was registered to Alluquere, and I guess that made me citizen enough to fight and die for it.

"Things with the Alliance went from bad to worse in a hurry. Alluquere and the other Rim worlds with armies thought they were ready, but they got sent back to school right quick. By the time I met Malcolm Reynolds, I'd seen fighting on half a dozen worlds. Seen half a hundred people I knew killed. Got our butts kicked more than once, and won a few victories that turned out worthless. Worse than worthless, really, cause they cost us so dear losing would hardly been worse."

"Pyrrhic victory, you mean."

"Figures, that sort of thing happens often enough to have a name. The turnover was getting so bad, there were only six of us left from our original company. Bout seven replacements in ten were kids you knew wouldn't last long enough for you to learn their names, so we didn't try. Seemed we had a new commanding officer every month, too. Amazing how many ways those fellas could come up with to get themselves killed. Command was looking everywhere for replacements, even among the Volunteers, most of whom us vets didn't trust with a rifle.

"One day, our sergeant buys the farm, and everyone is figuring Corporal Alleyne for a promotion to take over the platoon. I was too, I suppose, but I was none too eager. I was having trouble enough taking care of myself at the time. I was getting swallowed up by the death all around me, losing sight of anything else, and losing hope of getting through the war alive. There are names for that. Ours was 'going fey.' There's no cure, once it's well rooted. And a soldier gone fey is as dangerous to his team mates as an armed grenade. They can't count on him to watch their backs, or even stay out of trouble. He drags everyone down, forces them to split their attention when they can least afford it. When he finally buys it - and they all do, sooner or later – it's more relief than tragedy. I was getting numb to it all, the way a person does just before he starts making mistakes that get him and his squad killed. I sort of prayed they'd find us an experienced noncom to fill the sergeant's slot.

"Instead, they send us this… half-trained horse rancher in a brown coat, who marches into our lives like he owns this war, like he's ready to win it all by himself if he has to, but he's willing to let us share the glory if we lend a hand. He grins at us when we look sideways at each other, and starts giving orders like he's been telling us what do since the beginning of time. I gave him a week before he stuck his head up when he shouldn't, or gave an order stupid enough to get him shot by his own troops. Seven months later, when we shipped to Hera, he was still there, and we couldn't remember what it was like to be without him. That Browncoat sergeant brought me out of it, made the fight seem worthy again, at least till Serenity Valley."

The chair creaked again as she stood. "What happened to River was beyond bad. But you need to look harder for someone to lay it on, like the hwundan who kidnapped her and cut her up and drugged her. Think on them as unkindly as you like. But the captain needs more from his crew than polite restraint. And if you're still crew, you'll give it to him. Else, God help you, you've got no place on this ship."

"You love him," Simon said softly. "Don't you?"

Wash stopped breathing; his heart seemed to stop, too. The claustrophobic space around him disappeared from his consciousness. He was a pair of straining ears, nothing more.

"Doctor, I can say true that I never held a thought of sharin a bed with him for any longer than it took to sneeze. I'm sure he felt the same. We had plenty of chances and never took them. We never needed that sort of comfort from each other. And besides, I'm fair sure the little rooster who flies this boat has ruined me for other men."

His heart started again; his breathing, not so much.

"But?" Simon pressed.

He heard her shoe scrape the floor as she turned for the door. "My man once told me I was a woman with two husbands. Wish to God I could have called him a liar."


	3. Reappraising the Situation

Supper tray in hand, Simon silently slid aside the door to River's room, glanced inside, and flushed with anger.

Captain Reynolds was in his sister's room uninvited, bent over her sleeping form. _Checking her restraints, no doubt_, he thought. Except that Simon had removed them; nothing but weariness held her to her bed. And Simon was sure that if the captain ordered her tied down again, he'd refuse. And if the man reached for the cuffs himself…

He was holding her hand.

"I'm sorry," he said, almost in a whisper.

River's eyes were still closed, but a line appeared between her eyes. "Go way," she said peevishly.

Mal straightened and laid her hand on the mattress.

"It's too crowded," she went on. "Get out of the _way_, I need to talk." Then her eyes slitted open, and she smiled sleepily… at Mal, not her brother standing just outside the door. "Hey, Captain," she said in a sunny tone very unlike her, her voice pitched high and musical.

Mal bent back over her. "How are you doing?"

"I'm shiny, Captain. A-OK." Mal started. Simon recognized it too: Kaylee's voice. Not a perfect imitation, but very close. "Can't feel much… below my belly, though. It's gettin cold."

Simon hadn't anesthetized River. There was no reason…

Mal reached for the sheet at River's feet and drew it up as far as her ribs. "Well…" He seemed to be searching for words. "Well, you just gotta rest. Something's gonna break down on this boat real soon. Who else I got to fix it?"

"Oh, don't you worry none. Doc fixed me up… pretty." She gave Mal another sleepy smile. "He's _nice_."

The tiny hairs on Simon's forearms rose as he realized the probable origin of the present conversation.

"Don't go workin too hard on that crush, mei mei," the captain said. "Doc won't be with us long."

_Kaylee pulls through, you and your sister are getting off at Whitefall. If she doesn't, you'll be getting off a mite sooner._

"You're nice too." She stirred slightly, settling back into sleep.

"No I'm not." The man's head bowed. "I'm a mean old man."

"He wasn't gonna let me die," she said, as if stating something obvious. "He was just trying to… It's nobody's fault, okay? It's nobody's fault." She reached clumsily for his hand. "Just promise me you'll remember that."

He took her hand in both of his. When he answered, his voice was rough with emotion. "I'll keep it in mind."

_He did. He offered us a place, until we could find a better. Now I know why._

"You _are_ a nice man, Captain. You're always looking after us… You just gotta have faith in people… not lose it in yourself, either. He's smart. He'll… figure it out, if you just give im time. It's nobody's fault." She drifted off towards sleep.

As quietly as he could, Simon slid the door shut. But voices still came clearly through the thin partition.

"Little one, am I talkin to Kaylee or River?"

"What's it matter? One a your girls, anyway."

When the Captain slid the door aside and looked out, he saw Simon standing at the bottom of the companionway with a tray in his hands. He looked back into the open doorway. "Just checking on her. She's sleeping, but a little restless."

Simon nodded. "Thank you, Captain. I'll try to wake her for dinner. Tomorrow, with your permission, I'd like to escort her to the table."

Mal gave him an odd look. "That's fine. Sure everybody be glad to see her up and around." He stepped past and put a foot on the bottom step. "You look plain wore out. After you feed her, go to your room and get some real sleep. I'll see to it she's not alone. Whoever's with her can call you if need be." He ascended the stairs.

-0-

Kaylee came upon Jayne alone in the cargo hold, doing squats with every weight in his collection fixed to the bar across his shoulders. The look in her eye made him uneasy, because he remembered seeing it a lot out the corner of his eye between the night he'd called it quits with her and the day the doc came aboard, but not since. "Jayne. Put that down a minute, will ya?"

"What's this about?" But he heaved the bar off his shoulders and racked it.

"Dance with me."

"Kay-kay, you know I don't dance."

She slid her arms around his waist. "Call it what you want then." She rested her head on his chest and swayed softly. "I'm not tryin to get you back in my room, Bear. I just need a little time with a man doesn't treat me like a leper."

"He don't treat you like a leper," he said, feeling big and awkward as he spread his hands across her back, his elbows out.

"He sure don't treat me like a girl he…" She sighed. "I spose everybody knows I did it with him, the night the three of us got stupefied together. Only, I don't remember a minute of it, and after all that waitin, too. I musta been worthless as a rag doll. For sure I didn't impress him any. We woke up in the engine room nekkid as peeled grapes, and he jumped out of the hammock and grabbed clothes so fast youda thought the ship was on fire again. He hasn't touched my hand since." She looked up at him with teary eyes. "Ta ma de, what's _wrong_ with me? First you, now him. How come I don't 'serve a man's love?"

He put his arms around her then. "Told ya. My fault, not yours. You love too big for a man like me, Kay-kay. I could never give back. A month with me would break your heart or leave you emptied out. He ain't like that. Five minutes watchin him with his sister'll tell you so." He gave her a little squeeze. "And don't think that boy's heart ain't in your hand. You got it all backwards, girl. You know what courtin's like, that place he comes from?"

She nodded miserably. "All fancy ladies in dresses worth a year's pay, with hands as white and soft as cream butter."

"Ehhh." He brushed a lock of chestnut hair off her forehead. "He thinks you're pretty as sunrise. But in families like his, the only woman a man ever knows is a wife or a Companion. And they build marriages the way you build a house, only it takes longer. Courtin starts before they're old enough to tup, goin around getting introduced to all the girls from the right families. Years before he's ready to hitch up, he's gotta make his pick and get permission from both families, just to call on her. They might see each other regular for a year before they can touch hands or be alone in a room together. First time they touch tongues or see each other in the altogether's their wedding night."

She stilled. "So I'm damaged goods."

He gently bumped the heel of his hand to the side of her head. "Women. He knows things are different for girls out here. But he's still got a lifetime of upbringin tells him he treated you shabby, ruttin with you after a night a drinkin, like… well, like me. He's keepin his distance cause he's ashamed of himself, and he can't believe you could forgive him if you figured it out."

Her eyes widened in a way that made his heart leap. "He said that?"

"He didn't have to. I got eyes. I see him lookin at ya like a starvin man anytime your back's turned." He rocked a little, making her move with him and relax. "Be different if you was just a floozy lookin for a good time, somethin he took up with after downin a skinful. He'd be embarrassed, plenty, but not all eat up over it. It's cause he's got bigger ideas for you, Kaylee Frye."

"So he needs to court me, ask permission first, all that? I can't just wait around till he talks to Pa. I haven't been home since he came aboard. What am I gonna _do_?"

"I got an idea. Give me some time to put it together." He let go of her, turned her towards the door, and smacked her rump gently. When she reached the opening, he said, "Kay-kay."

She turned to him, a question in her eyes.

"About that night you two…" He paused for a breath and a second thought. "Well, he don't remember it either. You'd both be startin fresh. Like it never happened."

-0-

With _Serenity_ in the dirt for a second day and conducting no ship's business, the crew had more free time than usual, and morale had taken a sudden lift with the ship engaged in a paying job and their crazy little mascot finally up and around. The period after supper found most of them playing ferretball in the cargo bay, which meant mostly running back and forth with the ball under the big steel hoop and shouting to one another. As usual, no one was keeping score, since scoring rules changed from contest to contest and were seldom agreed on anyway; winning or losing by points wasn't what ferretball was about.

River was in the thick of it, though no one was ever sure which side she was on, since she kept switching teams. But no one grudged her the sport or the exercise. She seemed to grasp the rules of play by intuition, which was kind of fitting since they made no sense. And once she got the ball there was no stopping her. She bounced and spun and ducked and wove her way through the tightest defense, delivering the ball to the hoop time and time again. Once, she heaved the ball at the hoop from the other end of the bay, and put it through without touching the sides. It was just as her brother had said: crazy or not, anything she set out to learn came natural to her as breathing.

She tried another long throw, but this time, the Shepherd managed to jump up, stretch out a hand, and knock the ball away with a grunt. She screeched and leaped at him, hands raised. Before anyone could react, she'd wrapped arms around the old man's waist and bobbed up and down with him. "Good save, preacher man! We got em on the run now!" She grinned and chased after the ball uncontested, oblivious to the sudden silence while everyone's hearts started back up.

Later, Wash and Book were sitting in the little sitting area off the galley, waiting their turn at the shower with towels around their necks. Wash said to no one in particular, "I can't make up my mind. Do you think she's different? Still loopy, mind you, but different."

"She's still our babbling River," the Shepherd put in. "Terrible pun, I know. But it seems to me she's easier to understand."

"Or maybe we're all going crazy, so she seems to make sense now."

Jayne appeared, towel and shaving kit in hand. "Anybody in the shower?"

"Mal, I think."

"Meanin you think it's Mal in the shower, or you think somebody's in the shower and it's probly Mal?"

"You know, the more time you spend with River, the more you sound like her."

"Just in no mood for surprises. Damn latch on the shower door is broke again. You'd think you could fix it so's it stayed fixed."

"The screws keep working loose, and when they fall out, Kaylee can never find them. There aren't any left in stores. My guess is the water recycling tank is full of them."

"Well, then, how bout a gorram curtain between the stall and the changing bench, at least? I walked in on your wife yesterday, and my beard'll go gray fore I convince her I didn't hear the water runnin."

The shower room door opened, dispensing a wisp of steam as Mal stepped out. Wash leaned back. "One of you guys go ahead. I'm waiting for someone."

Jayne looked at the Shepherd. "High card?"

"Go ahead," the older man said. "I'm in no hurry."

A moment after the door shut behind him, River appeared from the forward passage. She didn't look like she'd come for a shower, Wash thought. In fact...

He nudged the Shepherd and pointed with his chin. Instead of one of the dresses Simon had bought her, River was dressed in a long-sleeved shirt over a coverall with cutoff sleeves, an outfit he was almost certain belonged to Kaylee. "Hey. How's our star player? Or somebody's star player, anyway."

"All shiny," she said with a lilt in her voice and a sunny smile. She dropped into the couch next to Wash, opposite the Shepherd. "Kaylee filters in place and active, chaos held at bay."

"That could use some explaining," the Shepherd said. "What's Kaylee got to do with this?"

"My input filters are gone, cut away, burned away," she said, sounding rather more like River for a moment. "Can't let my girl get overloaded, or I'll break down for sure. Kaylee's filters are an acceptably close analogue, best fit on the ship. Easiest to copy and modify, many points of commonality."

Book nodded. "Because you're friends."

Her eyes widened. "Oh, no, Shepherd," she said, and Wash and Book traded a glance, because the girl's voice was a close imitation of Kaylee's again. "We're friends because we're alike as two peas in a pod. Both know things we can't know, things we can't explain. She hears _Serenity_ talkin to her, I hear everybody else. We both feel sudden fears we don't like talkin about, and we both wear our feelings out where everybody can see em, like clothes. No underwear."

"I hope that's a metaphorical statement."

She went on as if she hadn't heard. "Same pas, too."

"River," the Shepherd said, "Kaylee's father is a farmer. Yours is a shipping magnate."

"What they do isn't what they are," she said dismissively. "They love their little girls, want to keep them home safe forever, but the wide world called, and they couldn't say no." She frowned. "Some dissonance. Sometimes get very un-sisterly thoughts. Did you know Simon sleeps shirtless? A girl shouldn't look at her brother in his jammies and think about running her tongue all over him. Or wonder how _his _tongue would feel, in her mouth or-"

The Shepherd reached across Wash and clapped a hand over River's mouth. "We get the picture."

With the Shepherd's forearm under his chin, Wash added, "And a vivid picture it is, too."

As Book dropped his hand, she gave Wash a heavy-lidded smile that made his skin prickle; it was a look he often woke up to on his wife's face after a night of lovemaking, the one that told him she was ready to start all over again. "Second best fit would have been Zoë. Figure the Wash temptation rating at Saffron times root two." Then she reached up and mussed Wash's hair roughly, rearranging it into clusters of damp spikes all over his head. "I always wanted to do that."

"I'm afraid to ask which 'I' we're talking about here. Or which 'that.'"

She nodded gravely. "Equal but differently horrible repercussions." Then the smile broke out again. "You forgot your soap. How you gonna wash, Wash?"

He shifted. "Uh, Zoë's bringing it."

"But she thinks you brought it. Should I tell her?"

The pilot frowned. "How? Implant a suggestion?"

She rolled her eyes at him and stood. She flicked one of the toggles on the wall intercom. "Wai, Zoë."

"_Kaylee?_"

"River. Wash left the soap on the washbasin in your room. Don't forget to pick it up when you come up." She released it, and looked to the door to the shower. "He's had long enough."

She marched to the shower door, threw it open, and shouted, "BEEEF!" In a voice like the lowing of a cow. From inside the cubicle, Jayne roared, and she shut the door. With a satisfied smirk, she headed for the aft passage. "Sketchbook."

When she'd disappeared through the passage, Wash turned to the Shepherd. "This _is_ an improvement, right?"

"Strange and mischievous is better than strange and violent, I think. Though one might wonder how she knew where you left your soap. And she found your wife on the intercom first try. Still…"

Yeah. An improvement, I guess. Unless her new notions of wacky fun include itch powder in the suits, or rigging the grav to cut out when we start hard burn." They watched the shower door open partway and Jayne stick his head out, looking thoroughly pissed with water dripping from his beard. "Could be worse, I suppose. If Kaylee starts thinking she's River, this boat's never gonna lift again."

-0-

"Captain. Where are you headed after you drop this off, if you don't mind my asking?"

Mal and Sessions stood at the top of _Serenity's_ ramp, watching their respective crews at work. Sessions' men had just offloaded a big cryo container from a wheeled flatbed vehicle to the hold, and Jayne and Zoë were securing it to the floor. "Don't mind you askin, but I don't have much answer. A short stop at Sihnon to let off a passenger, then wherever work takes us."

Sessions lowered his voice. "I have a proposition, one I expect you'll jump at if you hear it out. I know three men need passage to Boros."

"Who can't travel by commercial liner, I suppose." The refusal was already on Mal's lips. He had no intention of turning his ship into a shuttle service for conspirators and revolutionaries. "Boros is the opposite direction."

"They're not ready to leave yet. You'd be coming back for them." The man held his eyes. "And they're hiding, right enough, but from competitors, not the authorities. Some rich businessman and his associates working on a trade deal. They don't want any details to leak out before it's sewed up, hence the secrecy. I imagine when he's at home he has dinner with Alliance officials every night. He's no risk to you."

Mal glanced up at the steel box. "How'd they get stranded? Come on the ship brought this?"

"No. He's a regular customer of mine. I brought them on my ship."

"Why don't you take him to Boros then?"

"Schedule conflicts. This part of their deal is concluding quicker than they'd planned, and they need to move soon to sew it up. But I'm waiting for a man here, on business you don't want to know about, and I _can't_ be somewhere else when he arrives."

Mal nodded. "We can do business, maybe. What sort of payment do they offer?"

Sessions lowered his voice further. "He's offering to find you a buyer for the Lassiter."

"Wuh de tyen, ah," he said softly, flabbergasted enough to invoke a Deity he denied, if only in Mandarin. "How do you know about that? How does he?"

Sessions raised his eyebrows. "I told him. As for how I know, well, news of the theft was all over the Cortex. And I'm afraid the fences you contacted could have kept the fact a little closer, but it isn't every day they get offered something like that. It was just a matter of being the right person asking the right questions in the right places." He leaned closer. "I think I'm the first to figure it out, but others are sure to follow. I'd unload it quick as I could if I were you, even if I had to throw it away. It's nothing but a danger to you if you can't sell it. And I'm guessing this man could get you the price of a brand-new ship for it."

Mal thought about that. There was a lot of sentiment, and not just his, attached to the bucket of bolts they called home; he didn't think any of them would give it up easily. But that kind of money would fix her up new, with a big cash cushion to see them through until business picked up again. No doubt Jayne would want it portioned out so he could spend his share on whores, but Mal was the one who determined profits and expenses from their takes, and he wasn't about to see this chance thrown away so the big merc could enjoy a month of debauchery. "How would you work it?"

"Well, he'd have to look it over, of course, maybe even put it on capture to show around and verify its authenticity. And he'd need a way to get in touch quickly once he has a buyer. Payment and transfer details might be difficult to work out, with buyer and seller at opposite ends of the 'Verse and neither easy to find, but he's a resourceful man."

He took a breath. "Be easier if we just gave him the Lassiter to sell for us, dontcha think?"

Sessions raised his eyebrows. "That's a lot of trust."

"Mr. Sessions, I was raised a rancher. I can drive a good bargain on feed and livestock, and I'm getting a feel for trade in small goods and sundries that keep a little boat like ours flyin. Priceless artifacts are out of my experience. An unscrupulous man could cheat me ten times over and I'd never know it. Either I can trust this man or I'm throwin it away anyhow. Can I trust him?"

The man nodded slowly. "Well, if you'll take my word on it, yes. Maybe more than you can trust me, being I sometimes work for shady characters, and they sometimes give me instructions that make me a little uneasy. But you can leave your treasure with this fellow, I think. I've never known him to play any man false in a deal, and I'm sure even the Lassiter isn't worth enough to tempt him."

"All right, then. Let's cut to it. What does he really want from us? He's offering a lot for a ride to Boros, on the sly or no."

Sessions nodded again. "You're right. He does want something else." He glanced over at the cryo box. Simon was checking its telltales, nodding in satisfaction. "See, I've got standing instructions from him to keep an eye out for that boy. He wants you to leave the good doctor and his sister with him until you come back for them all."

"What kind of…" For once, his Mandarin failed him. "What is he playing at?"

The man turned back to him. "I said my passenger was a respected businessman, but that's not all he is. I told you I was hired by the Underground to get that girl out. He's the one hired me."

-0-

Kaylee sighed under the touch of the brush in River's hands as the girl drew it down her hair. "Don't know exactly why, but it seems like hair brushin's about the most comfort one woman can give another. Well, that ain't romantic in nature."

"Inara loves brushing your hair," River said, gathering a handful of it behind Kaylee's neck and drawing the bristles over it. "It reminds her of life in the Chapter House. And she just plain likes you. And feels sorry for you. A little."

Kaylee started to turn, but stopped. "Sorry for me?"

The brush moved smoothly down her back. "She knows you envy her lifestyle, and wonder what it would be like. But she's certain you could never be a Companion."

She stared straight ahead, her good feeling melting away. "No looks for it, I suppose."

She felt a tug on her hair. "Companions aren't all exotic beauties like Nandi or Inara. Some of the most in-demand are so plain we'd look like goddesses next to them. It's all in the training, and the attitude. And that's where she thinks you'd fall short. A Companion has to be able to fall in love and back out as easy as breathing. She doesn't think you could ever learn to let go of love that easy." The brush resumed its gentle motion. "If you ask me, that girl deserves our pity. Being trained to gather love and put it aside took something out of her. Finding out there was a man whose love she couldn't let go of busted her up pretty bad. That's why she's leaving, you know."

It was strange, Kaylee thought, how easy River's changed voice and manner were to get used to, kind of like talking to herself. It made her want to talk about things with the dark-haired little beauty that she usually kept close. "I s'pose you can read me like that too." It wasn't quite a question, because she wasn't sure she wanted an answer.

"Harder now that I'm identifying with you. People never really know themselves." The brush paused, then resumed. "Being inside you is like being in this bright and airy mansion with an inviting façade and beautiful views out every window. But the floor plan isn't as simple as it seems from the outside. There are little-used sections deep inside where sunlight never touches, where you leave tracks in the dust when you visit. And there are doors you never open, doors that quicken your steps as you pass by."

Kaylee stopped breathing.

River's hand stroked her head, alternating with the brush. "No one aboard questions why violence steals your senses, not even the Shepherd or Inara. They just assume you're a stranger to it. None of them suspects what you've witnessed, what's been visited on you." She felt a finger at her cheek, brushing away a tear she hadn't known she'd shed. "And I'll die before I tell, don't you fret about that."

Abruptly the girl's hands drew back. "The man…"

Kaylee turned, looked up. River was pressing the heel of one hand to her temple, her head swaying slightly. "He wants… No, that's not…Is it really _him_?"

The brush clattered to the floor.

"He's leaving. Simon's leaving the ship."

-0-

"You don't need to do this," Captain Reynolds said again. "Things are moving mighty fast for my comfort. There are damn few once-in-a-lifetime offers in this world. A man's tryin to hurry you into a deal, it's usually a bad one."

"This man and his employer got my sister out of the Academy." Simon looked out the cargo door at the truck, and at Sessions leaning against it as if he could stand there all day waiting for an answer. "The money might have come from me, but it was their knowledge and contacts that made it happen. I feel as if I owe them something."

"We'll be out of touch for a week or more. I'll remind you that you nearly got killed in less than a day, the last time you went missing."

"If you ordered me to stay aboard, I would." Simon met the captain's eyes. "And I'm grateful that you didn't. You're not worried he'll turn me in, are you?"

"No, I'm worried about whatever plans he has for you that I can't imagine. If he just wanted to meet you, it was a lot easier done sometime before he got her free, on Osiris, instead of out here at the back end of beyond."

"Perhaps he wanted to meet the girl he saved."

"Then he's going to be right disappointed. I told Sessions she was in no shape to leave the ship. He didn't say how his client took the news, but I doubt he was happy about it. I think Sessions took our part in that, and quieted him some."

"All the more reason not to keep him waiting." He turned into the ship to pick up his belongings and say his goodbyes.

He tried to keep the farewells short; he didn't want anyone thinking he was afraid he'd never see them again. Wash and Zoë seemed of like mind, or perhaps they were just impatient to be alone again; he thought he might have interrupted something when he stepped onto the bridge. Book had looked grave, warned him to keep his courage and his wits, and promised to pray for him. Inara had touched his head, smiling, and had told him to think of the coming week as an adventure. All of them had promised to look after River.

Jayne had shaken his head and scowled. "I think this whole deal is eda tuo da bien. Steamin and stinky. I'd give ya that little target pistol, and a knife too, but I'm sure they'll search you. Just listen to im and nod your head, but don't tell him anything you don't have to, and don't make any promises." He hadn't offered to shake hands, and when Simon had offered his, the big man had batted it away. "That's for strangers when they meet, and friends when they don't think they'll see each other again. We'll see you in about ten days."

Kaylee had wrung the rag in her hands. "I'm sure everything'll be fine. But it's… You… I'm just gonna miss you something fierce, is all."

Impulsively, he'd leaned forward to brush her lips with his, and turned quickly away. "I'll miss you, too." He dared not say more; he had no right.

"_Simon Tam_," she'd said, with uncharacteristic steel in her voice. He'd turned back to see her staring at him, arms folded, like a teacher regarding a lazy pupil. "There's not another man in the world I'd take that dry little peck from as a token of love. I'm expectin a better from you someday."

He'd left the lounge, face flaming, and gone aft to the passenger dorm. The door to his sister's room was open, and she was sitting cross-legged on the bed with a pad in her lap, writing. "I already know. I wish I were going with you. But I'm sure I'd have to fight my way off the ship, and besides, I may be needed here." She tore the page off and, with a series of skillful motions, folded it into a small sealed package. "This is for him. But it's in your keeping. Read it after you meet, and decide whether to give it to him." She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tight. "Remember. After you meet him. Make up your mind about him first."

He knew better than to ask for an explanation, sure that any she'd give would just confuse him further. "I will." He picked up his bag and a pack from his room, and returned to the hold. He accepted a brief handshake from the captain, and a paded bag containing the ancient laser pistol. Then, shoulders squared, he marched down the ramp.

The wheeled vehicle they'd brought the cargo on had an enclosed passenger cab. Simon sat in the front seat next to Sessions, who drove, with the other two men riding in back. "Why didn't you use this the first time? It's much quieter than the sled you used."

"It leaves tracks. That won't matter now, but it might have at our first meet."

They'd hardly got out of sight of the ship before the sound of the drive pods winding up filled the little valley. The engine noise suddenly changed to a roar, and the truck stopped as they all looked back to watch _Serenity_ pop up from among the crags, a pillow of dust rising beneath it, and leap into the sky.

"Good pilot," Sessions remarked. "Not sparing the fuel, either. Must be in a hurry."

"They take their work seriously. And there's a lot of money waiting for them at the end of the trip."

Sessions started the truck back up. "And maybe they're not in a hurry to get there so much as they're in a hurry to get back. The crew I met seem right fond of you."

"I've been tending their hurts for a year now," he said offhand. "I suppose that creates a certain feeling of obligation on their part."

Sessions gave him a hooded look. "You fell into a bit of luck when you picked that ship to run away on, I'm thinking. Change of subject. How's your sister?"

"Better. She had a bad spell, the worst ever. But it's passed, and now she seems almost normal."

The agent nodded. "He'll be glad to hear that. I described that fit of hers to him, and I thought he was going to smash something."

"Mr. Sessions, who is he?"

The man shrugged as the truck emerged from the islands of rock onto the sandy plain. "I've worked for him, off and on, for years. I have a name for him, but I'm sure it's not his real one. This was the first time I did a legitimate job for him." He turned to Simon with eyebrows raised. "Sure didn't take long for his dealings to turn twisty again." He turned his attention back to the desert in front of him. "Or are you asking me what sort of man you're dealing with, what he's up to?"

"I suppose I was."

"Well, I'm used to taking orders from people who give me damn little by way of explanation. This one's no exception. But… one of my people was killed getting your sister out."

"I'm sorry."

Sessions waved a hand in acknowledgement. "When he found out, he arranged a trust fund that set that man's wife and daughter for life. Money doesn't fix everything, of course, but he did what he could. He's no one you'd be ashamed to know, young Tam."

-0-

Kaylee drifted down the forward companionway leading to the passenger dorms, the lounge, and the infirmary. She aimed to check on River, but she also had some unfocused notions about looking in on the sickbay to make sure everything was tidy. She thought, after she saw to River, that she might just slide open the door to Simon's room and look in from the passage. She certainly wouldn't step inside, or lay hands on his things, and most especially wasn't going to lay down on his bed. Hopefully.

_You've gone daft_, she told herself. _We've barely cleared orbit and you're mooning after him already. It's not like you'd be seeing any more of him if he was here; he's been avoiding you like a poxy whore. Even if Jayne's right about that, it's downright wearing._

She sighed as her foot touched the deck. _It's just knowing he's gone._

Zoë and Inara were in the lounge, sitting side by side on the big couch. That was unusual enough to pull Kaylee out of her fog. The ship's mate and their goodwill ambassador weren't unfriendly, but there was something between them that kept them from drawing close. She guessed that that 'something' had a favorite old pair of cotton pants shrunk up right nice from many washings.

They were close now, though, bumping shoulders and hips as they smiled over a sheet of paper they were both holding. Inara spotted Kaylee and gestured her over. "Look at this. River must have left it on the table. It's incredible."

"A real masterpiece." Zoë's smile was cool as usual, but mischief lit up her eyes and voice. "I think we should hang it on a wall somewhere."

As Kaylee drew close, Inara turned the page around for her to see. She took a glance and snorted.

It was a pencil drawing, too detailed to be called a sketch. River's work, for sure. It was Jayne, naked in the shower. He was turned sideways, standing on one foot, the other leg being raised to figleaf himself. One hand was reaching for his man parts, and the other toward the artist palm-first in a gesture of denial. He had lather on his cheek, half through a shave. His eyes and mouth were wide open, and you could tell he was yelling fit to make the walls quiver.

Inara set it on the low table in front of the couch, and the three women leaned over it. "I wonder how he's going to pay her back for this. Kaylee, you have _got_ to find a way to fix that door."

"_I_ wonder how she remembered so much detail from just a four-second peek," Zoë said. "Doesn't seem possible. He _does_ have a handsome ass, doesn't he? Not the best I've seen, but handsome." She put a forefinger to the paper, touching a triangular mark on Jayne's side just below the ribs. "What do you suppose this is? A birthmark, maybe? Or a scar?"

Kaylee was taking in the picture like it was a bowl of fresh strawberries. "Knife burn," she said absently.

"What?"

"Uh… you know, like when you get wounded, a cut or a bullet hole or some such, and you got no first aid, so you heat up the end of a knife and press it to the wound, sort of seal it up. You never done that, Zoë?"

Zoë looked at her carefully. "I have, though not to my own hide. You learn that trick growing up on a farm?"

"Oh, read it or some such. I don't remember."

"Well," Inara said, giving her a secret smile, "I have to sort through prospects at Halifax. Guard that with your lives, you two."

"I'm thinking River will want this back," Zoë said, rising as well. "Looks like she went sheep-brained and left it behind, pencil and all."

"I'm headed that way." Kaylee picked up the pencil, a type used for writing rather than an artist's tool. "I'll see she gets it."

After the others left, she looked at the drawing for a few moments more. Then she carefully erased the knife burn and redrew it a bit further down, just above the hip.

-0-

After half a day of travel across the flat wasteland, they saw buildings above the shimmering horizon ahead: a settlement. The truck drew closer, and Simon saw that they were approaching a market town built around a rough landing field. All the structures were made of rammed earth or adobe the color of the sand all about, and none more than two stories tall. On the field sat a single ship, smaller than _Serenity_ and much more aerodynamic. "Yours?"

Sessions nodded. "She's fast, and got decent range as long as you're not carrying much. Six or seven's about her limit." They passed a checkpoint of some sort, a man in coveralls with an assault rifle, and Simon tensed, but Sessions just waved through the window and rolled by. The truck entered a street lined with warehouses. "Your ship's no garbage scow either, looks notwithstanding. Didn't know those old Fireflys had it in them."

"The pilot and mechanic have made some modifications, as I understand it. They both say the model has a lot of unused potential."

The truck pulled up to a warehouse and stopped. Sessions reached for the door handle. "Guess my offworld client knows ships better than I do. He was mighty pleased to hear I'd signed yours to handle his cargo. Called it 'exciting news.'" He slid out of the cab. "This way."

Sessions led him into the building, the other two men at the trail, navigating among stacked crates to an open stairway at the rear of the building. Simon looked up, and saw a broad landing ending at a closed door.

"Wait here," Sessions said to the other two, and beckoned him up the stairs. They reached the door at the top landing, and the agent stood aside. "He wants to see you alone."

_Seems Jayne could have loaned me the knife and gun after all._ Simon gathered his composure. He took a deep breath, stiffened his spine, and entered.

It wasn't enough. The man was standing with his back to the door, looking out the window, but Simon recognized him instantly. His senses dimmed as the man turned toward him, and from far away, he heard his own voice. "Father."


	4. Strongly Worded Memos

"I imagined you changed, so many ways." Gabriel Tam regarded his son, his face giving away nothing. "But you just look tired. And you've lost weight."

"Father… _why_?"

"A great many questions in that simple word, I'd wager. I really don't know where to start." He gestured hesitantly to a squat bottle and two glasses. "Your favorite, as I recall. It wasn't easy to lay hands on out here. Will you drink with me?"

-0-

Sessions rejoined his men at the bottom of the stairs. Alone and unobserved, the two relaxed around their boss. One of them looked up at the door. "So, what's this all about, Al? What's Thompson want with this kid?"

"Didn't say, Dickie. At a guess, he's looking at him and his sister as unfinished business. I suppose he's got an offer of some sort for them."

"Which'll prolly involve us. Been busy as a one-man band since we took this job."

"We have been juggling geese a bit," Sessions admitted. "Wasn't supposed to be like this. Duvie should have been waiting for us when we got here. Thompson was sure the trade group he was seeing would take longer to strike a deal. When this other job came our way, I wasn't sure I'd have time to line up transport for that box. But it all worked out. And like you say, Thompson's already coming to us for more work."

Dickie nodded. "Plenty times, I wish we was on his payroll permanent. No offense, Al, you keep us in work, and the pay's good, but some of the people we do jobs for I wouldn't share a meal with."

"Like the little peckerhead we're handling that crate for," the other said. "That story about it being another package for the Underground. What was that all about?"

Sessions raised an eyebrow. "How do you know it's not?"

The man twitched a shoulder. "Not much like anybody in the Underground we ever dealt with."

"Be thankful for that. Some of those guys I wouldn't leave alone with my beer while I took a piss. Believe me, he'd fit right in. _That_ gang ever ends up running the Alliance, the Rim won't be far enough away." Sessions glanced up at the door as well. "Maybe the little monkey's a go-between like us, a fixer. For sure he's particular about how he does things. I had to hunt across half the Rim to find that gorram tramp, but he wouldn't have any other haul his cargo. Got to admit, it's a damn fine little smuggler. Still…"

Dickie frowned. "What was that fairy tale about opening the other box early? Orders again?"

"Sort of. He refused to put a seal or a lock on the damn thing. Seemed strange, but he said if it was locked up, Reynolds wouldn't take it on. I think now he was right."

"And then in the same breath, he tells Al to convince Reynolds not to open it, no matter what. You shoulda heard him on wave. 'You must see to it that Meester Rreynolds does not open my leetle peckich,'" the man said, imitating the reedy voice of the client who'd hired them to deliver the box into _Serenity's_ hold and send it to Halifax. "'Money will not be enough, I theenk. You must sway him a beet at a time, like a nervous woo-man at the bedroom door, yes? You will see to it, Meester Seshunss. I hear you heff a talent for such theengs. Your reputation eez not yet so-lid, but you are well-recommended.'"

Dickie grinned. "Deke, you crack me up sometimes."

-0-

So you're a leader of the Underground." Simon held the tiny cup of sake untasted, letting it warm in his hand.

"Upper management would be a better description. And I could wish there were only one Underground. We'd get more done." His father took a swallow, his eyes never leaving his son. "The Alliance isn't the monolith it appears from out here. The face it presents to the Rim is unified enough - the Fleet, the big corporations that operate under license, the civil administration - but the government and politics of the Central Worlds is another story. Planetary and other nationalist governments maneuver for control of the legislature and executive. Trade groups, single-issue movements, special interests of all kinds buy and sell influence. They compete or cooperate, and coalitions are fluid. Nobody is loyal to anyone else, and they agree on almost nothing – except for Alliance policy towards the outer worlds.

"The people who work for change from outside the system are just as varied. Their ambitions run the gamut, from anarchists who want to bring the Alliance to utter ruin to… aspiring Xian Yus who'd turn the Core into a police state, and the defeated Independent Worlds into concentration camps." He drained his cup. "Our group simply seeks to curb the government's worst excesses, and hopes to see the Union become a commonwealth, with all worlds partners sharing in its progress. That modest goal seems very distant sometimes."

"Does Mother know?"

"Of course. She's the one who got me involved." The older man smiled at the memory. "I knew that girl since we were children. I used to steal her toys to get her to shriek and chase me through the house. I courted her for six years. We shared hobbies and entertainments, took trips together – chaperoned, of course. We spoke on every subject – or so I thought. The last year of our engagement, we spent so much time at each other's houses our estates seemed merged already. And then, on our wedding night, when I think I'm about to learn the last things about her I don't know, I find out I don't know her at all. She told me while she was removing my cravat."

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"About your affluent parents being conspirators and revolutionaries? We thought you were too young, at first. Then, when you began your studies at MedAcad, we thought you were already burdened enough. I suppose we were just afraid to tell you."

"About River, I mean. Sessions said you got her out. I don't understand. Why let me go through all that, thinking I was buying her free? You just let me blunder along, blind with fear for her. Why?"

Gabriel Tam set down his cup and refilled it. "By the time you showed us that letter, we'd already learned the true nature of the Academy and were laying plans to get her out, building a network of contacts on the inside. The security there was very tight. Our natural impulse was to keep you out of it, since you couldn't help, and we didn't want the officials running it to feel… threatened by discovery. So we tried to convince you to drop it." He huffed, and tapped a sheet of paper lying next to the bottle. Simon recognized a copy of his arrest warrant. "We should have known better. We raised two very single-minded children. Brilliant, but stubborn."

"You were so obtuse and intransigent," Simon said. "Like different people."

The older man nodded, looking into his cup. "It was no easy thing, lying to you, feigning impatience and anger. Threatening you. Watching the respect fade from your eyes that day in the police station. But I didn't know what else to do. You were circulating among all the wrong people, asking about River and the Academy. Every time a police informant whispered your name into his handler's ear, security at the facility tightened a little more, and we had to rework our plans. After the police picked you up that first time and it didn't deter you, I didn't dare try to stop you anymore; if you had, that would have been even more suspicious."

Simon tossed the expensive rice wine to the back of his throat and swallowed as if it were Kaylee's uncut moonshine. "The people I contacted. A different Underground."

"Yes. They took your money, and you worked for them, but it was for nothing. Their promises were empty. They were never going to get River out."

"That's why I didn't hear from them again. They were done with me." A thought occurred. "Wait. Your man Sessions. He was with them. My first meeting with them."

"He told me. But their plans were ludicrous, and they wouldn't meet his price for a proper job." He stepped closer. "How is she?"

Simon shrugged. "It was bad at first. Very bad. She seems to be getting better, and I have hope. But it's like watching the tide come in. It's too easy to pin your hopes on that odd wave that rolls halfway up the beach. And when it recedes, you look at that brief high point and wonder if that's as good as it's ever going to get." He set the cup down and reached into his pocket. "She's fairly lucid right now, and what they did to her made her… strangely perceptive sometimes. I think she knew I was coming to meet you. She wrote you a letter. She told me to read it first, but I think that was just for my peace of mind." He drew it out and offered it.

-0-

It was times like this, Jayne thought, you realized just how gorram small this ship was.

That gorram crazy idjit girl. For sure and for certain, she had a way of getting under his skin that had nothing to do with reading his mind. Right now, he needed to do something that taxed his body and kept him too busy for idle thinking. He wanted to get out somewhere and run till his legs felt disconnected from his will and his breath rushing in and out tasted of blood, till he stumbled to the ground with his whole body recoiling to the hammering of his heart. But there was no place aboard with a straightaway long enough for more than a bitty wind sprint.

He'd walked about the ship instead, not sure if he was looking for her or not, knowing that he'd never find her unless she was so inclined. But he'd found damn near everybody else aboard. He knew it wasn't imagination put those looks on Zoë's and Inara's faces, or on Wash's either. That made him madder still.

He'd avoided the engine room.

Two other places he wasn't about to look for her were his room and hers. Living with Wenda had taught him that anger between a man and woman had a way of twisting into something else sometimes; he wasn't about to confront River with his blood up just two steps from a bed.

He drifted into the cargo bay finally, with some half-formed notion of burning out his bad mood on the weight bench. Instead, he found himself staring at their cargo, the cryo box that was a twin to the one she'd arrived in.

_When did it start?_ He asked himself. He wasn't the most inward-looking of men, and finding answers by such means was uncomfortable and strange. But it was something he'd been doing more and more of since she and her brother had come aboard. _The moment she slithered out of that gorram box, that's when._ He remembered how her scream had pierced him, a man who'd heard plenty of cries of pain and fear. The boy had slipped out of his grip and rushed to her before he'd even realized. And the story the doc had told about her in the mess had agitated him so much he could hardly sit still.

Later, he'd nearly blown the interrogation of Dobson when the weasel had referred to her as a 'package.' Convincing their prisoner that Jayne was coldly capable of anything was key to getting the information Mal wanted without the delay and bother – and risk - of torturing the lawman. Slipping out of character and punching Dobson's face in over a word would have ruined the setup and given the trigger-happy little hwundan a real lever to move them with.

She'd said he'd been growling at her like a suspicious dog for months. He supposed he had, and for the same reason: he'd been scared of her. Ariel had changed that. He'd still been scared of her, but all thoughts of sending her away had gone.

He sighed. It was damn strange, feeling close to a woman and not knowing what you wanted to do with her.

"Still mad at me?" Kaylee's voice, but not. A pair of arms wound around him from behind.

He looked down: Kaylee's sleeves, River's hands. "You can't tell?" He laid a hand over hers. The anger was gone, just disappeared the instant she touched him and spoke.

He felt her forehead press against his back. "Maybe I just wanted to hear you say it."

"No, then, moonbrain. I allus wondered how your brother put up with you. Now I reckon he just couldn't help hisself. But don't do it again. That was a hell of a shock." The worst of it had been that first half a moment when she'd pulled the door open, smiling that gorram smile again, and he'd thought she'd come to join him.

"Thought about it." She gave him a squeeze. "Too many witnesses. You swore up and down nothing happened that night. Jumping in with you would have made you out a liar. But the offer I made that night stands."

"So's my answer."

Her hand moved in a slow circle around his navel, making him tingle from groin to ribs and shortening his breath. "You sure? There's no one between us and passenger quarters." She swayed gently, tugging at him. "And I got mosta my marbles right now."

_Dance with me._

He pulled her hands off his belly. "An which of ya would I be tuppin?" He turned and took her head in his hands. "Little girl, I do a threesome, I expect two full sets a woman parts to play with."

She looked up at him, eyes sober. "Wouldn't do, calling you 'Bear' in a moment of abandon, either, I suppose." She took a deep breath and let it out. "Someday you're going to run out of excuses, Jayne Cobb. Then you're going to have to decide what you want to do with me."

He dropped his hands, and she turned to go. But she stopped and turned back towards the cryo box, as if something had drawn her attention to it. But nothing about it had changed to Jayne's eye. He watched her lay hands on it as if she was trying to feel something through the metal. "What are you doin?"

She pressed her cheek to the box, as if listening. "What's in here?"

"Dunno. One a your little classmates, maybe."

"No." She closed her eyes softly. "There's no one in here. Something, waiting."

-0-

Wash's voice cut across Mal's thoughts. "Mal, you ever visit Halifax before?"

He'd been staring out the bridge windows into the Black and woolgathering, thinking about looking in on River again. Last time, he'd found her in the engine room with Kaylee, both of them with their feet sticking out from under the machinery, chattering away as they passed tools back and forth, and he'd had to listen close to tell which was talking. Then River had slid out from under with grease on her cheek and her hair done up tight at the back of her head, and she'd smiled at him like sunshine. "All shiny, Captain Tightpants. Turns out two intuitions are better than one."

Pleased as he was to see the girl out of nightmare-land, he was uneasy at the way she was clinging to this Kaylee impersonation to keep her head above crazy. He wondered how long the trick would work, and if they'd have any warning when it quit, and how bad it would be after. And he wondered about his part in her affliction, and what he'd have done different. Those weren't good thoughts to have, but he couldn't help himself right now.

"Mal?"

He turned from the window, and saw the pilot glancing from him to the console display. "Sorry. Halifax? No, just Whitefall. Why?"

"Are we supposed to deliver 'on' Halifax, or 'at' Halifax?"

He blinked. "Why, they got a town with the same name?"

"There aren't any towns. There's no one on the surface but the terraforming crews. It's still under development. The only established settlement is the skyplex they're using for a construction shack."

Mal drew close and leaned over Wash's display, which was dialed in to the Cortex and showing nav and physical data on the Halifax operation. "Alliance," he breathed.

"Technically, no. Terraforming outfit licensed by the Colony Board. But the station is leased from the Alliance, and you can bet the Feds manage traffic control and keep order aboard."

Docking at a station meant being locked down until they got permission to leave; if they got caught with illegal goods, they never would. And if they were boarded for inspection and the Feds discovered River…

Sessions had said they'd be met at Halifax by a man who'd make the exchange and take their parcel, someone who'd see the process went smooth. Although Mal felt the agent was no stranger to shady dealings, he was inclined to trust the man. That left their little mascot as their remaining problem. Hide her, and risk her being found? No. Suiting her up and sticking her outside wasn't an option this time, either; a skyplex in orbit had a lot more people out and about than a ship in space, and she'd likely be spotted clinging to the hull. Launch her in the portside shuttle with Zoë, and rendezvous later? The missing shuttle might make the authorities' noses twitch. How to get her safely off ship before docking?

He touched the intercom button that connected him to the starboard shuttle. "Inara?"

"_Yes, Captain?_"

He cleared his throat. "You doin any business at Halifax?"

"_I'm screening applicants right now,_" she said guardedly. "_Is there a problem?_"

"Yes and no. There's a problem, but you might be the solution."

-0-

Simon watched Gabriel Tam unfold the paper with exquisite care, more than one could possibly think necessary to avoid damaging it. Rather, Simon imagined his father was savoring the way it opened up for him, knowing his daughter's fingers had creased and secured it for him. Finally it was open, revealing the message, and the man's eyes misted as they traveled over the page. He glanced up once at Simon, a question in his eyes, but then dropped back to the paper without a word. When he finished, he passed it to Simon and turned back to the window.

_Pa,_

_I love you, you did everything you could, and none of it is your fault. Sorry to be so abrupt, but I don't know how much time I have to write this and I wanted to make sure that got said. I know this doesn't sound like my usual missive, but as Simon will tell you, I'm not entirely myself lately._

_I'm among good folks who stand by me and treat me right. They're rough and uncultured mostly, but they're as their world has shaped them. I suspect you know more about that than I. Simon is working hard to undo what was done to me in that place, and I feel better. We've made a life for ourselves out here._

_Speaking of which. Pa, Simon won't ask, but I beg you to give him permission to court a girl. Her name is Kaywinnit Lee Frye, of the New Home Fryes, not that her pedigree means much to you, likely. But her pa and her brothers are men of principle and resolve, and you'd get along. A mutual friend has already approached her family. Please say yes. I know you had your heart set on Adele Holmes-Garrett for a daughter-in-law, but you're a practical man, and you know the Alliance isn't going to let us pick up our old lives, ever. Besides, I like Kaylee better. She plays a mean game of jacks._

_I don't know when our paths will cross again. There are a million things I want to say to you, and I long to hear your voice. But he's just said goodbye to Kaylee, and he's almost at my door. He won't want to wait; everyone feels pushed by unease and a nameless urgency._

_Give my love to Mother, and tell her I'm well._

_Your Loving Daughter,_

_K River_

_P.S. I was never going to marry Winston anyway. I'm thinking of becoming a mercenary, or maybe a Companion._

_xxx_

"She's not really well, is she?" Gabriel Tam kept his face to the window. "Sessions told me. If she's better now, I can't imagine what she must have been like at first."

Simon stepped towards him. "It was a mischance. We didn't know what warming her early would do to her."

His father turned to him, perplexed. "Do to her?"

He felt his brows gather. "You know. Breaking cryo too soon. Cut short her convalescence. Unhinge her mind."

"Son, what are you talking about? From what Sessions tells me, she came out of that box in the same condition she went in. We barely got to her before they burned out her mind, like all the others."

He felt disoriented, confused. "Wait. She was disturbed when she was rescued?"

"Very."

"You said, 'all the others'."

Gabriel Tam nodded. "There were six students in her class. She was the last survivor. The others became so schizoid their handlers couldn't make sense of their answers anymore. So they froze them, hoping for a treatment in the future that would make them usable again. We had someone on the inside feeding her hallucinogens to make hash of her responses. When they gave up on her and put her in cryo, we switched her into another container and smuggled her out of the complex."

"So... there aren't any more."

"No." The elder Tam shook his head. "Perhaps River's escape made them recalculate the cost-to-benefits. Or they might have run out of children with the gift, I don't know. But there are no new test subjects at the Academy, and the originals are all still in cryo, except for her."

"No other escapees?"

"Not a chance. As soon as she was missed, security at that place closed like a steel trap. We'd never get her out now."

-0-

Sessions and his men turned and looked up as the office door banged open and young Tam stepped onto the landing, followed by a perplexed-looking Thompson. "Mr. Sessions. You lied to me." The boy tramped down the stairs to meet them. "I want to know why."

Sessions shrugged. "Sorry. Orders."

Tam turned to look up at Thompson." Not his."

"No. My client with the box."

"There's no refugee inside. What's in it?"

Sessions shifted on his bad leg; the damn thing always seemed to act up when he was tense. "I don't know. When I arrived, it was already here, and its owner was looking for an expediter who could satisfy a very particular client and not ask unnecessary questions. I've never had a problem with that, as long as the money was right, so I took it on. I got orders to get it to Halifax un-tampered with, delivered by your ship and no other. But your captain seemed disinclined to haul it without knowing what was inside. When I heard her carrying on and saw you, I made a lucky guess and came up with that story so he wouldn't open it. I know it was rough on you. Take a poke at me if you want."

"I wasn't the one who opened the box. It was the Captain."

"Ah." Sessions was silent a moment. "That puts a bit of a spin on things, if he's true to his reputation, and I think he is. Then again, he's getting very well paid. That ought to make up for being tricked into taking the job."

"Mr. Sessions, I think you're missing the point. Why was it so important this cargo be carried to Halifax by _Serenity_, unsecure but unopened? Who's the client?"

"I can't say."

"A young red-headed woman? A middle-aged gentleman, dark haired, with a scar on his cheek? Or with a strange accent and a derby hat? An elderly man, balding, wearing lenses?"

Sessions kept his poker face on while the boy recited his list of suspects. But he noticed that young Tam wasn't looking at him. He cursed inwardly when he realized the boy's eyes were flicking from Deke to Dickie, knowing they'd be more likely to give something away. The boy was not only smart, he was unexpectedly cunning.

The doctor's attention returned to him. "We've got to stop them."

Sessions shook his head. "They're out of signal range. Unless you want to use the message beacons and share your words with every busybody in the Alliance, as well as giving them both parties' locations."

"Then we have to chase them down. You have the only ship here, isn't that right?"

"Impossible. Even if I wasn't pinned to this spot by contract, they've got too big a lead. She's fast, but not that fast." It didn't do to think what penalty Kersey's bunch might impose if their man Duvie showed up at port without immediate offworld passage.

"They won't be coming back for their money, Mr. Sessions. The authorities at Halifax will be waiting for the ramp to drop. You've led them into a trap." The boy was trembling with emotion. "You've _got_ to try to catch them!" He stepped closer. "Is it money you want?"

"Sessions," Thompson said from the catwalk, "I don't understand what's going on, but I'll pay whatever you want."

"Deke," Sessions said. "Dickie. Get to the ship. Deke, I want you to put a lock code on the controls. Dickie, guard the hatch. I wouldn't put it past this young man to try and steal our transport." He looked up at his employer. "I'm sorry, Mr. Thompson. What he's asking can't be done. It's too late. And I have another client's interests to protect."

"Wait." Doctor Tam's voice was suddenly calm. "Let me get my bags off the truck before you go, at least."

-0-

Jayne had retired early to his bunk behind a locked door. Not that the door lock would stop River, and would hardly slow Kaylee, if one of them thought he was sick or in trouble. But he thought both would respect a sign he wanted privacy.

His thoughts had turned inward again, searching for how the little crazy girl had softened his heart. He supposed his bitty time with Kaylee had set him up for it, but it wasn't enough to explain…

When had he ever acted such a fool, gone so far from his own interest over a girl? He drifted off to sleep with that thought on his mind.

-0-

He was on the hunt. The man he was trailing was in a hurry, knowing Jayne was after him with blood in his eye, also knowing Jayne's skill as a tracker made speed a surer bet than subtlety. Not that Kripitch left a sign just anyone could follow; he was woodcrafty enough for a city-kid-turned-outlaw, and he'd started his flight on a path trod by plenty of feet, which mixed things up some. But when he'd stepped off the trail, he'd tried to broom his tracks out with a length of brush. To Jayne's eye, the marks were as plain as a road sign.

Half an hour later, the hwundan had hit on another half-smart idea, and turned up into a ridge covered with broken rocks. Jayne had heard that people who didn't know squat about tracking thought you couldn't follow a trail over rocks. He supposed there might be some kinds of hard terrain that was true for, but this broken ground left plenty of sign, from little spills of disturbed pebbles to crumbled rockfaces that had been spalled off by the recent passage of feet, plain as plain. He climbed the ridge, thinking about sending Kripitch's brains spraying out the back of his skull.

He slowed as he neared the crest, thinking the hwundan might be lying in wait on the other side, and that made him look ahead at the trail a little more carefully than he might.

The tracks ended ten feet from the ridgetop.

He threw himself to the side, and a shot rang out. He belly-crawled to a biggish rock, a long fold of stone running alongside the trail. "Sloppy, Kripitch! Shoulda laid the trail all the way over the top, youda got me sure."

"Doesn't hafta be this way, Cobb," the man called back, his voice echoing off the rock faces. "Chrissakes, she was just a little whore."

"She was just a kid too scared to say no till it was too late, you horse's ass." Jayne poked his head around the boulder for a half-second look before he yanked it back; he was safe again before Kripitch pulled the trigger. "Sides, some of the best people I know is whores." The hwundan was hid in one of two places; how to narrow it down? He moved to a spot that could be covered only by one of the two possible hides. He poked his head out and drew it back quickly: nothing. Unfortunately, that didn't prove anything. Against all sense, he exposed himself again from the same spot. Before he could draw back, a bullet spanged off the rock a yard from his head, sending stone chips into his brow and cheek. He picked them out and wiped at the blood, counting himself lucky. He hadn't taken any real hurt, and now he knew where the little prick was hiding.

He also knew what he was packing, by the sound: an M&E Model 10, a stubby machine pistol with a thirty-round clip and a rate of fire that would empty it quick as a blink on full auto. It was a fine tool for a bandit looking to scare somebody or take down a door, but nothing Jayne would carry against an armed opponent. Kripitch was smart enough to have it set on single shot, but it was still a lousy weapon for a gunfight in the open; even at this piddling range, Jayne was sure he could win a duel armed with a couple of rocks.

But Kripitch was hunkered down, and Jayne would have to get behind him to deal with him. He wished he'd brought one stinking grenade; that would have put paid to the whole affair. But he hadn't expected the little hwundan to pick up and run, and so had gone to meet him with just a pistol.

"Whassa matter, Cobb, you wanted her? You shoulda said so. I'd of give her to ya, soon's I was done."

When Kripitch was done with her, she'd been cooling meat. If Jayne had found out sooner the little bastard had grabbed a town girl, he'd have made him give her up; hell, he'd have bought him a woman, just to keep peace. But a willing partner hadn't been what Kripitch had a taste for.

He belly-crawled to an open spot masked from Kripitch's sight and studied the terrain. Jayne might start his approach from here, but he'd be exposed for the second half of the thirty-yard run over broken ground; he didn't like the odds.

"Jayne!" Kripitch was shouting at the place he'd seen him last. "Come on, man. You're actin crazy. Yu bun duh. You're gonna turn on your mate over a piece? She wasn't even that good."

He crept up quiet as a snake until he could go no farther unseen. He picked up two rocks. He lobbed one in a high arc towards his second position, the one Kripitch had almost tagged him at. Just before it hit, he threw down the second one at his feet, hard.

The M&E screeched; the idjit had switched to full auto to fire at the second sound, thinking the first and louder one was a distraction. The auto pistol was loud as all get, too; Jayne was sure Kripitch's ears were ringing from it, and his scramble over the rocks to reach the scalawag was unheard till he was on top of him.

He popped over the last rock, and Kripitch met him with a blade, a big combat knife. Jayne turned and leaned back as the blade speared past, grabbed the man's wrist with his right hand, and lifted the extended arm to bring the wrist to forehead height, safing the weapon. At the same time, he drove the heel of his left hand into Kripitch's elbow. The crack of the joint breaking was loud, but not as loud as the hwundan's scream a second later. He twisted the broken arm and forced the breathless man to his knees. One good kick in the soft meat under the jaw, and it was done. It was only then he realized he hadn't bothered to draw his pistol.

He dragged Kripitch by one leg, head bumping over the rocks, out where he'd be easier for the scavengers to find. Then he went through his victim's pockets while said victim was still clutching his throat with one good hand, rolling eyes and weakly coughing blood. He took the knife and its belt scabbard, all the man's cash and ID, and a little necklace with a purple stone he found in a pocket, something that would have been a young girl's prized pretty. He tossed the pistol as far as he could and heard it clatter among the rocks, by which time Kripitch was well and truly dead. He spat on the corpse before he left.

He looked at the sun and his back trail to get his bearings, then set out towards a more distant town that might not have heard about the girl's disappearance yet. He wasn't about to go back to the outlaw camp. Bad as what Kripitch had done was in Jayne's eyes, what he'd done to Kripitch was worse in theirs. He couldn't be trusted anymore, and his crew would kill him on sight. He was leaving behind eight months' saved loot, a few weapons and clothes, and no friends.

He wished he'd been able to get her body back to her people, or at least bury her, instead of leaving her for those two-legged jackals to dispose of. But if he had, Kripitch would have got away, and Jayne would have had to leave the gang anyway. And sooner or later, the hwundan would have come back from town with another scared little girl's wrist gripped in his fist.

Feeling a strange fierce sadness, he tucked the necklace inside his vest and walked out into the scrub.

-0-

He stood at the door, listening to the hissing sound of the shower. The unlatched panel moved under his hand, and Kaylee stood under the water, half-veiled in steam, skin glistening and slippery with soap and her wet hair shining darkly. Waiting for him. She smiled in invitation, her eyes dark and intimate, and he moved toward her as if pulled on a chain.

And then he drew up short, because the smile wasn't Kaylee's.

-0-

He woke with a gasp and a throbbing tightness at his crotch. He looked down and saw his blanket tentpoled.

"Gorram crazy idjit girl," he grunted. He stood and shuffled to his brother's guitar on the wall. He took it down and tipped it back and forth, listening for a tiny rattle from inside the sound box.

-0-

Simon stepped into the ship's pilot compartment and paused.

Sessions' accomplice, Deke, sat at the pilot's station. Sessions stood beside him. Both men turned to him. "Doctor," Sessions said. "How'd you get up here? Where's Dickie?"

Sessions was armed, Simon was glad to see. That made the agent's unexpected presence in the cockpit manageable; an additional detail, nothing more. "Before you call your man to chastise him, have a look at this." He casually extended a sheet of paper to the agent, trying not to let on how he careful he was being to touch only the lower right corner. "It's the reason he let me up here."

Sessions took it and began to read. "Your arrest warrant? I've seen it."

"This one is different." Simon nodded at it and flicked a glance at Deke, who was also armed, but carried his pistol in a holster with a cover that snapped. He had one hand resting on the board and the other on the seat back, nowhere near his weapon. "Keep reading, and you'll see what I mean."

The agent's brow furrowed, as if puzzled. "I don't…" The paper fell from his fingers.

Simon lunged at him. "Mr. Sessions! What's wrong?" They went down to the deck together.

Deke rose from his seat, his hand reaching uncertainly towards his holster, but Simon already had Sessions' pistol. He extended it towards Deke; in the tiny compartment, the end of the barrel was half a meter from the man's forehead. He flicked the safety off by feel, his eyes never leaving Deke's. _You don't always need to know how to shoot if you only look like you do._ "Remove your weapon. Carefully. Then slide it across the deck to me."

Deke tried a bluff. "You just safed it. And it's only a popgun anyway."

"No, I didn't. And this weapon is small, but it's perfectly capable of penetrating a skull once. Then the bullet just sort of rattles around inside." That knowledge came, not from Jayne's experience, but his. Even in an upscale teaching hospital in Capital City, a trauma surgeon saw his share of gunshot wounds, and he'd attended more than one autopsy featuring a brain that had been stirred into oatmeal by a small-caliber bullet.

Deke unsnapped the holster and carefully pulled the pistol out with one finger and a thumb. "Thought you were a doctor."

"I've had this conversation before. It ended with someone not me being carried into the infirmary with a gunshot wound. You're wasting time."

The pilot slid the weapon over. "What did you do to him? To them?"

"The paper is chemically treated." He didn't elaborate. Deke didn't need to know that the two men would wake in a few hours. "I sealed the hatch on the way in, and Dickie's inside. Lift. Give me a high-energy course to Halifax."

"The fuel cells are only a quarter full. We'll be drifting before we're halfway there."

"Our target's not Halifax. It's _Serenity_."

"We'll never catch them."

"We don't need to. We just need to get within range to wave them." He wiggled the gun slightly. "I'm quite sure you can still fly with a bullet in the thigh."

Deke settled into the seat and began flipping switches. "We could all die out there, you know."

Simon stood behind the pilot's chair. "My life is in that ship out there."


	5. Consensus of Opinion

Captain Mal Reynolds sat at the pilot's station on the bridge of _Serenity_, undisputed master of his ship… having been practically ordered by his first mate to take the helm while she dragged her husband into their bedroom.

He couldn't say he minded. Zoë deserved all the happiness she could glean from a life near his side, and he'd been surprised and more than a little pleased to see the sparks flying between her and the cocky pilot Mal was sizing up to fly his ship the first day Wash had come aboard. He didn't pretend to understand it, but it was plain as plain that those two were a matched set.

And Hoban Washburn had other uses besides keeping the ship's first mate happy. Mal and Zoë were both competent space pilots: with the aid of the nav computer and space beacons, they could get _Serenity_ from one place in the 'Verse to any other without getting lost. And they could pilot a shuttle anywhere its range would take it, even into a planet's atmo and gravity well. But Wash seemed to regard the computer and beacons as a convenience rather than a necessity, and could figure ten different course profiles to a destination while Mal was grinding out the numbers for the first. And the way he could fly the clunky freighter in atmo, like an assault boat on a hot run, was something you had to see to believe. Both talents had been lifesavers on more than one occasion.

Now, with the ship's course laid in and the autopilot engaged and nothing left to do on the bridge but admire the stars and mind the collision alarm, Mal sat quiet and content to contemplate their coming good fortune.

"Beautiful, aren't they?" Shepherd Book stepped between the consoles and sat at the top of the steps between, looking through the windows at the stars. "I know His works are all around us, but they're more obvious some places."

"They're runaway nuclear reactors that can kill a man uncounted ways, you get too close." Mal checked the instruments with more care than needed. "Hope you didn't come up here to compose a sermon, Shepherd. I'd make a bad sounding board."

The old man chuckled with gentle humor. "No. Not to restore your lost faith either. That's beyond my power, pray as I might that it happens."

"What makes you think I ever had a rat turd's worth of faith, preacher?"

"It's obvious. A man who's never felt betrayed by God doesn't cross streets to avoid passing in front of a church door." The old man raised his eyes to the stars again. "No, I just came to clear my head. An hour talking with Inara does that to a man, even an old celibate like me."

It was a mystery to Mal that a preacher and a Companion could be on such friendly terms. He was certain their relationship was aboveboard; he had more respect for Book and Inara as individuals than in what they did for a living, and was sure they held to their separate codes on such matters. But they often danced around each other in a way that put Mal uncomfortably in mind of flirting. "Well, turning a man's head is what she's trained for, after all. Not surprised to hear she doesn't need a grip on anything else to do it."

A moment of silence, and Mal wondered if he'd put the old man off. Finally, the preacher spoke. "I think her training simply developed a natural talent. The girl sees into people, the same way our Kaylee does."

He felt his molars compress. "Not. Quite. The same way, Shepherd."

"Because she's never taken payment for sex? That seems a narrow attitude."

_Well, I wanted to take him off the subject of God, right enough, but I didn't expect things to take this turn._ "Thought the Church took a dim view of such things."

"Officially, no. The Church recognizes and accepts the Companion Guild as a professional organization, and makes no moral judgments about the nature of its craft. I won't say all the Church's members agree with that, or even all the clergy. But it's official policy."

"Mighty open-minded. Or practical, depending how you look at it. Open war with the Companion Guild would win your Church no friends in the Alliance, I reckon."

"It's not about making friends, Captain," Book said quietly. "It's about doing what's right." He rose. "I fear I've intruded on your solitude enough."

As the old man headed for the door, Mal said. "Shepherd. What do you two find to talk about?"

"Everything, Captain." He paused at the door. "Even you."

-0-

"That's it." Deke flicked a few switches and settled back in the pilot's seat. "Out of fuel. Reactor's still hot, of course, and we'll have grav and life support. But if somebody doesn't spot us, we'll coast until the end of time. And your ship is still too far ahead to wave."

Simon glanced at the unconscious man on the floor. Sessions wasn't moving, but he and Dickie would be awake soon. "But we're overtaking them."

"Probably. No guarantees." Deke turned the seat around and looked him over. "You look ready to fall down, kid. Put the gun away and take a seat." When Simon hesitated, he went on, "What am I gonna do, overpower you and take back the ship? It's done. We're either gonna get picked up by your friends or we're gonna die together in this soup can. Take a rest."

"I'm not sure Dickie or Mr. Sessions will be so pragmatic."

"Suit yourself." He rose from the pilot's chair. "I'm going to the head, then I'm gonna check on Dickie. I come back, I'll start calling your ship."

When Deke returned, the young man was slumped in the pilot's chair, snoring gently. Sessions' pistol sat safed on the console; young Tam's right hand lay loose in his lap, cradling the mike. Apparently, he'd been trying to get the wave working when sleep had finally got the best of him.

Deke leaned over and took the gun out of reach. His own was lying on the deck near Sessions; he ignored it. He took the mike gently from the boy's limp fingers and fired up the wave. "Firefly transport _Serenity_, this is passenger vessel _Ellsinore_ directly astern. Acknowledge."

-0-

"Another sterling performance, my dear." Wash kissed the tiny dimple above his wife's left buttock and ran a hand down the back of her thigh.

She stretched and rolled over to put her arms around him. "I was plenty inspired, got to say."

_The rooster who flies this boat has ruined me for other men._

Her eyes searched his face from a hand's width away. "What's wrong?"

"Not a thing." His fingers traced an old scar on her shoulder blade. He had no idea how she'd got it. But Mal probably did. His fingers had probably been where Wash's were now, pressed against her bare trembling skin, holding the edges of the wound together with one hand and sewing them together with the other while she grunted in pain and bled onto his hands. Intimacy of an entirely different sort. _War stories._

"Tell me about her."

He blinked. "What?"

Her fingertips were resting on his spine, just above the small of his back, feather-light on the long scar. "Your mechanic. Janine, right? The girl you trusted with your life every time you climbed in the pilot's seat." She stroked the scar. "You were friends. And maybe more?" She wrapped her arms more tightly around him and pulled his head to her bosom. "Tell me a war story, Wash."

-0-

Simon stirred, and found he was the last awake. Deke was leaning over him, having just replaced the microphone. "Nothing yet."

Dickie glared at him from a step away. "Al! He's awake." To Simon he said, "Never fell for a Goodnight Kiss in my life till now. Then again, I never expected one quite like that. You're a sneaky little bastard."

Sessions' voice came from the passenger section aft. "Have him come back here out of the way."

Accommodations aboard _Ellsinore_ were on a par with a passenger shuttle: seating and sanitary facilities and packaged food. It wasn't meant to be a home for its crew. Sessions was in one seat, which was unfolded into a cot of sorts. He gestured to another. "Still feeling a little under the weather from what you gave me."

"It has that effect sometimes. You should be fine after a nap." He sat across the aisle, still weary. "I'm sorry."

"Doubt it. You just wish there'd been another way." The man shifted in his seat. "You know, you're lucky this bucket doesn't have an airlock. Dickie woke up before I did." He took a breath and let it out, a heavy sigh. "Care to explain what brought us to this?"

Simon imagined _Serenity_ rushing through space, unguessably far ahead. "You were played for a sucker, Mr. Sessions. The client you were working for is named Adelai Niska, and he and Captain Reynolds have a history. This whole contract was a setup. I only hope we can reach them with a message in time."

"Deke tells me that if we do get within range, it'll probably be just for a little while before we separate again. Different velocities and accelerations and orbital paths, pilot feihua. I can't claim to understand it. But he's been hailing them every few minutes since I woke up, so's not to miss the chance."

Simon rubbed eyes that felt gritty and dry as lizard eggs. "Why did you tell me not to open the box for at least a week, back on Persephone?"

The agent sighed again. "Damn, I'm tired. Son, I saw what she was like before she went in. I figured she'd draw attention and get you both caught five minutes after she was warm. You needed time to get away, get lost. If I thought you'd have listened to me, I'd have told you to keep her cold for a year." He shook his head. "You two have had plenty of luck, good and bad, since your little sister went to that place."

"You're very sympathetic, considering what I've done. Deke says we may all die out here."

"And we may. We're not sending a distress signal until we contact _Serenity_, or until it's sure we missed them. That _probably_ won't be too late for someone to pick us up. I'm more worried about disappointing my third client, the man we were waiting for. His employers are a rough bunch." He folded his hands on his chest and closed his eyes. "I'm taking that nap. You might do the same, kid, you still look like hell. Deke will wake you if he makes contact."

-0-

"So, he does sleep," Inara whispered to Kaylee as they stood on either side of the pilot's chair, bent to examine Mal's slumped form. His chin was planted on his chest, and his breath escaped his nose in a cross between a groan and a sigh. "I wonder what his dreams are like."

"Judgin by those little dove coos, I bet there's a beautiful girl in em." Kaylee bent further and brushed her lips against the hair above his ear. "I really do love him. I only wish he could find his smile more often."

Watching the girl's secret caress brought Inara a strange unease. She forced it down and found her own smile. "I'm sure he mistrusts people who smile too often."

"Hope not, cause I smile most anytime I see him." She turned and headed for the door.

Inara turned to follow, and paused, caught up by the thought of being alone with him for a moment when he was vulnerable and unresistant. _And what will you do,_ she chided herself, _run your fingers through his hair? Whisper nonsense? Remember who and what you are. Let him have his life without any more encumbrances._

About to turn away, she heard a faint beep. Mal stirred and settled again. A light on the console began to flash. "Kaylee? Isn't that a hailing signal?"

-0-

"Tam! Get your pigu up here, I got em!"

Simon lurched off the cot and stumbled forward as sleep fell raggedly away. In the cockpit, Deke was speaking into the mike. "-that's because we never met. I was one of the men at the bottom of your ramp when you shook hands over your last deal." He glanced up. "Wait, here he is now." As he handed the mike over, he said, "Suspicious bastard. Signal's fading already. Make it quick, make it count." He laid a finger on a console light that was beginning to flicker.

Simon took the mike. "Captain, this is Moonbrain's brother, Three Percent. The box is bait in a trap. Find out what's inside it if you can. Get her to help. The client is the man who wanted to meet the real you. He-"

"Forget it, kid." Deke's finger was still on the indicator, which was now dark.

-0-

Zoë Alleyne was no stranger to bad memories that visited her in the night, but the oldest of them had parted company with her when she became Zoë Washburn. Just having him at her side and hearing his breathing at the edge of her conscious mind was all she needed to keep the war stories out of her dreams. But there was one, more recent, that his gentle presence couldn't drive away, because he shared a version of it.

_The door to Niska's playroom opened, and she fought to keep her face and posture still, giving away nothing. But her first glance at the torn figures bound to the rack told her that her men were meant to die in this room, and soon._

_She offered up the crew's money, hoping against hope to buy the two of them free. But as soon as the twisted hundan gave her that oily smile and said, "Not enough for two. But sufficient perhaps for one," she knew his game. He wasn't really offering her her pick. And it was easy enough to guess which one he'd be willing to part with._

"_Him." Any other choice would have meant leaving empty-handed. She could have thanked the rotten little bastard for making it easy for her._

_She pulled Wash along, almost dragging him up the stairs when he realized Mal wasn't coming with. Mal looked her in the eye for the first time since she'd appeared, and shook his head slightly. __Go__.__ Don't __look __back__._

_Niska studied the three of them with his lizard's stare. "A moment, please," he said, and she felt ice in her belly, knowing he'd thought of another way to use the two of them to torture Mal on top of watching them leave without him. A moment later, he dropped Mal's ear into her hand, wrapped in a kerchief._

_Mal turned away from her as he screamed, and wouldn't turn back, even though she was sure he knew she was looking at him. She tucked the grisly keepsake into her vest, over her heart, and turned away._

_She didn't know how she'd explain to her husband. Best not to try, she supposed. He could never understand. Just put him on the shuttle, send it back towards the ship, and finish her business here. Her mare's leg and a few other weapons were stashed aboard, and she'd pick them up on the way out. She hoped Wash wouldn't look on this as a sort of infidelity when he realized. She didn't want her man to remember her like that. But she couldn't walk away and leave him, no matter the odds. No matter the cost._

_Wash stumbled over the lip of the shuttle's hatch, taking her down with him. The words tumbled out of him, frightening and confusing her. "He's insane. I heard the stories, but I didn't understand." "He saved you." "He kept me from breaking. I wouldn't have made it." And finally: "Bastard's not gonna get days." Wonder blossomed, and an even deeper love._

She stirred, and felt his body behind her as they lay on their sides like nested spoons. She felt his arms around her, his hands at shoulder and hip, and placed her own hands over them. _I'm right behind you, baby._

There was nothing about her this man couldn't understand.

The intercom clicked. "_Zoë? Wash?_" The captain's voice. "_We got us a situation._"

-0-

The entire crew stood around the cryo box in the hold, as if gathered for some ceremony. Mal nodded to River. "Look it over, little one. Tell us what you can."

River put hands on the box once more and drew close. Again, she pressed her cheek to the cool metal. "No person, nothing sleeping. Alive, but not living."

Jayne leaned in. "Any explosives? Poison?"

She slid her cheek and palms along the box's side, silent. She spread her arms wide, as if trying to embrace it. "Pain and fear. Cold that doesn't come from the machinery. From the hearts of those who touched it." She suddenly recoiled and gasped, and Jayne's arms were around her before anyone else could react. "Death and life. Fear and dark hope and… no explosives, no dangerous chemicals. Just evil."

"Pandora's Box," the Shepherd murmured.

Mal said, "Is it safe to open?"

Her face was buried in Jayne's chest. "If your heart can stand it."

The captain turned the latches securing the lid. Then he reached down and lifted the handle that broke the cryo seal, and the box hissed softly. He took a breath and carefully pushed the lid back.

The escaping mist revealed several rows of wire shelves all around the inside wall of the container. On the shelves sat stacks of small containers from jewelry-box size to ones big enough to hold an infant. He glanced at River, but the girl was still tucked into Jayne's arm, pale and unready for more questions. The others leaned in for a look.

Mal picked up a middling-sized container about the size of two fists. It was still cold to the touch, and he had a little difficulty with its catches before he lifted the lid. Or perhaps it was just that he already had some idea what was inside.

Zoë gave a tiny gasp a bit bigger than a hiccup. Wash said, "What the hell?" Inara shoved her hands into her sleeves. The Shepherd started cursing in Mandarin.

Kaylee stared at the object. "What… what is that?"

"It's a heart," Mal said quietly. "A human heart." He looked at the rows of boxes, feeling sick at heart. "We're carryin poached organs, hundreds of em."

"I don't..." But the little redhead's eyes were round with growing understanding. "What do you mean?"

Jayne was close behind her, River still in the circle of one arm. "Original owners weren't done with em yet."

Mal swallowed, nodded. The cryo box might contain the remains of a hundred victims.

"Not necessarily." The Shepherd's mouth was tight. "Could be these were stolen from a hospital. Or a black-market surgical team harvested a disaster site."

"Could be." Mal replaced the box on the shelf and pulled back the lid to the cryo box. "But getting caught with em is the end of us all, regardless." He re-established the seal and secured the lid.

He turned to see that Kaylee had joined River in Jayne's embrace, each of them in the circle of one arm. Even shocky as Mal was feeling right now, he couldn't help noticing that the girls' postures and hand placements on the big merc's chest were mirror images. Wash and Zoë were twined together, pulling a little closer each time one of them glanced at the box.

Inara, like Mal, stood alone.

So did the Shepherd, who looked from one of them to the other. "If Simon has the truth of the details of this transaction, we have an even bigger problem than what we're carrying."

"Meanin?" Jayne growled.

"Meaning someone went to a great deal of trouble and expense to put this cargo aboard this ship and no other, and send it into the hands of the Alliance. I imagine we're expected."

Zoë nodded towards the closed box. "Who else has got the money and connections for this? This must have cost a hundred times what he got from us."

No one said the name; no one needed to. "Seems he's lost his taste for up-close-and-personal, and he's takin his revenge at one remove." Mal looked to his pilot. "Where else can we go with the fuel in our cells?"

Wash shook his head. "Nowhere. We met this guy Sessions on a rock at the back end of the 'Verse with no fueling facilities. Once we were on our way to Halifax, we were committed. We dock there by midday tomorrow, or nowhere ever."

"Part of the plan, no doubt," Book put in.

"Then we'll have to space the cargo."

"Not the box, just the contents." The preacher's eyes turned on Mal. "You can be sure the authorities were provided proof it was put aboard after the fact, without being given a chance to examine its contents; they'd have never allowed it to ship otherwise. We'll need it for our cover story if we're to convince the authorities of our innocence. As well as some fine acting skills."

"Just- toss them into space, like garbage?" Kaylee shivered.

"There's nothing else to be done," the preacher said gently. "People die lost in space all the time, little girl. And I'm afraid these remains were headed for a bad end anyway. No reputable hospital or clinic will accept human tissue without a chain of provenance. Whether they were harvested through murder or criminal opportunity, they were destined to keep wealthy vermin alive. Better I say some words over them, and we cast them into the Black." He turned to Mal. "Subject to your orders, of course."

"I'll say it again." Jayne hawkeyed the old man. "You know too much about crime."

"But he's right. Say your words, preacher. Zoë, Jayne, secure the hold for vacuum."

-0-

"River, dear, are you sure you understand the plan?" Inara's shuttle slid silently out of its bay, coming to a stop with a gentle bump followed by the _snap_ of its lockdowns releasing. The little ship drifted free of _Serenity's_ hull, and Inara applied just enough thrust from the attitude jets to clear the ship's inertial field before engaging the tiny drive.

"So simple it hardly deserves to be called a plan," the girl replied, sounding less like Kaylee than she had of late, yet still coherent. Her hair was done up in a style similar to the Companion's, and she wore one of her robes. "You dock the shuttle at the skyplex, then we trade places in the cockpit. Anyone looking in the windows will think I'm Inara Serra."

"Good." The planet Halifax grew from a dot to a disc in the window; the skyplex was still invisible. "Just remember, once you're alone on this side of the curtain, don't leave the cockpit until I call you. And don't pay any attention to what you hear on the other side. If…" her voice trailed away as she thought her statement through. "I'm sorry. I was about to say I'd lose my license if you revealed yourself, until I remembered what _you'd_ lose."

River gave her a sunny smile that was all Kaylee. "Don't worry, 'Nara. I won't crash your little tea party. And you can pretend I'm not listening while you entertain, if you want." She touched three fingers to her lips and smiled behind them. "Now, _there's_ something you don't see every day – a Companion blushing."

She huffed. "It wouldn't be embarrassing if you were a Companion. Or not a virgin."

"Oh? You believe him?"

She nodded, eyes on the world ahead. She thought she saw a star at the edge of the disc that was moving in relation to all the others, and guessed the skyplex was rounding the planet towards them. "Yes. It's obvious to a trained eye that you two haven't coupled." She added, "Yet. Do you want that?"

"I think so, but I'm not sure. I think he'd be a perfect first." River smiled. "Every girl wants at least one tender bad boy in her heart's memories."

Inara scoffed. "He certainly fills half the bill, anyway."

The two women's hairstyles left tendrils of hair loose at the temples. River played with one at her left temple, curling it around her index finger. "He can be very tender."

The girl's loose robe parted slightly at the throat, and Inara was surprised to see her wearing a necklace. The front of the band was a simple braid of thin silver wires that separated at the throat to make a setting for a breathtaking pale lavender stone nearly the size of a marble. Inara knew something of gems; even as rudely cut as the stone was, she was certain River was wearing a fortune around her neck.

River smiled without looking at her. "From Jayne. He killed the man he took it from."

"How romantic," she said faintly.

River nodded. "In its way. He noticed that I don't have any jewelry. He said that a young girl should have pretties, and that I must have had all kinds of them when I lived at home. I didn't have the heart to tell him different. I left for the Academy at fourteen, too young for a proper girl to start wearing ornaments. This is the first I've ever had. He put it around my neck with his own hands and called me his little sweetheart."

"Really."

"Not always a courting term where he comes from. Can also mean a special female friend, usually younger, that a man is obliged to look out for for some reason. It's strangely unclear, but I think the man he killed stole this from a girl he cared about. Odd that I can't read any more about it from him."

"And to think," Inara said, "before I boarded _Serenity_, I thought there was no such thing as a mysterious man. Now I find myself on a shipful of them."

River nodded and wound her hair on her finger again. "Maybe that's because most of the men you meet are clients. No matter how different they really are, when they come to your door they've all got the same thing on their minds."

"That's not entirely true, dear." The world before them had expanded to fill half the windows, and the skyplex had assumed a definite shape. "But I think you'd have to be a Companion to understand fully." She touched the com control. "Halifax Station, this is Firefly transport _Serenity_ Shuttle Two, requesting separate docking instructions."

-0-

"_Firefly transport __Serenity__, proceed to Dock One, ten degrees spinward of the administrative mast. Approach dead slow, attitude thrusters only. Do not open your hatch until signaled._"

"Sounds like they want everyone ready to jump out and yell 'Surprise' when we come through the door," Wash said sourly. Zoë wound arms around his neck as he guided the ship to its berth among the clutter of booms, gantries and small cargo carriers shuttling pallets of material from one assembly point to another. Mal noted suited figures aplenty swarming over the station and the docked ships. Halifax Station was a busy place.

The ship thumped into place as _Serenity's_ airlock met the station's flexible seal. Several more clanks and hisses indicated umbilicals had been attached and lockdowns engaged. Wash turned to him. "Port lock," he said. Meaning the station's computer had overridden the ship's nav and drive controls and taken them offline. _Serenity _was dead in the water, so to speak, awaiting the stationmaster's pleasure.

-0-

The shuttle approached the station. From behind the curtain, River listened to the voices in the cockpit. "_Shuttle, open your hatch immediately upon docking and prepare for inspection._"

"That won't be necessary," Inara replied in a cool tone that clearly said _bad idea_. "As your records show, this shuttle is engaged by exclusive contract to a Registered Companion. This is my home as well as my office, and I'll be receiving my client here. I won't be setting foot on station."

A technicality. The station still had legal jurisdiction over a nonmilitary vessel at dock, but had little grounds to enter one not bringing goods or people on station. And no one liked to provoke the Companion Guild. The power of money and sex, River supposed. "_Any visitors will be subject to challenge and search, before and after… consulting with you. And the identity of your client must be confirmed for the record. This is station security policy, not subject to negotiation._"

"I'm sure Commander Sung will understand," she said easily. "After all, he probably wrote the policy." Silence at the other end, while the shuttle bumped and vibrated as it was grappled and drawn tight against the station lock.

"_Enjoy your stay here, Mistress Serra._"

"No doubt I will," she said, and closed com. The curtains parted and closed behind the Companion. "We have a little time. I suggest you use the head while you can. I'll send you into the cockpit with a cup of tea for appearances' sake, but don't fill your bladder."

"Shiia. Be right back."

When River came out, Inara was holding her little lacquered box. "River, do you remember coming in here and speaking with me about this?"

She reached for the memory among the confused thoughts of one of her chaotic times. "Yes." She smiled. "I was asking for kissing lessons."

"For the 'cock-a-walk in the derby hat.' Badger, really?"

She nodded. "That case of drugs was no mistake. He knows who's aboard _Serenity_; he's made it his business to know. And he doesn't sell goods without some idea of their value. But Badger and company are rather different people than the captain imagines. He knew that if he offered that case to Simon for any price we could afford, it would only make Simon and Mal suspicious." She quirked a smile. "He's a very shrewd negotiator to get it into my brother's hands gratis, thinking it was all his doing."

"Why?"

She felt her smile broaden. "He likes me. He said so."

Inara's smile matched hers. "You have a very unlikely pair of suitors, Miss Tam." Then the smile faded, became thoughtful. "But I was talking about this. I honestly have no idea what you were talking about. Who loved me, and who kept him from me?"

"Oh." River touched her fingertips to the box still in Inara's hands. "I'm not sure anymore. But this box belonged to your mother. I think I was talking to her, sort of."

Inara replaced the box on its shelf and gave it an unfocused stare, deep in thought. "I have to say, mysterious statements notwithstanding, you're sounding very rational right now. But not like Kaylee at all." With her back still turned to River, she wound a tendril of hair at her left temple around her index finger: an unconscious gesture from childhood, River knew, but performed only when she was alone. "Some new development?"

River nodded at the Companion's back. "I've been experimenting."

-0-

As instructed, _Serenity's_ captain and first mate were on the other side of the airlock doors when the ramp dropped, and before it touched the station's deck, a dozen weapons were aimed at them.

Mal raised his hands. "Whoa, there. What's this about?"

No one spoke as the squad of armed men scuttled in. Two kept Mal and Zoë in their sights; the others swept their weapons all over the hold, searching the catwalks and covering every entrance.

Three officers in full Alliance Navy uniform, complete with caps, boarded with another half-dozen armed men. Mal, hands still raised, addressed the highest ranker, who looked a bit old and hard for his captain's insignia. "I'd appreciate an explanation, Mister. We've broke no laws I know of."

Instead of answering, the man nodded to his subordinates, who drew weapons and entered the ship with three men each. The ranking officer turned to Mal. "Papers."

Zoë was holding the ship's documents in one upraised hand. She extended them to the officer, who took them in hand and looked them over. "You've come here from Creighton's Moon. For what purpose?"

"Delivery of cargo on commission."

"Whose commission?"

"We don't know, we dealt with a middleman who contacted us. But the money was good."

"So you claim you don't know who you're working for, or what you're hauling."

"It's not a claim, it's a fact. A condition of the contract. We forfeit half our fee if the box is opened."

The officer glanced at it. "And yet it's not port sealed. Contents uninspected and unverified. You might open it a dozen times and there'd be no way of knowing, would there?"

"I agreed not to open the gorram thing. My word means more to me than half a fee."

"Is that so?" The officer studied the documents again. "I don't see any inspection stamps for New Beginnings."

"Never been there."

"What about Georgia system?"

"There are a few worlds in Georgia system we used to touch down on regular." One of them was the world circled by Niska's skyplex. "Not lately, though."

The man glanced up at the hatch to the starboard shuttle bay. "Where'd that one go?"

"Docked separate. We lease it to a Companion, and I suppose she's with a client by now. Commodore-"

"It's Captain."

Mal clenched his jaw. Ships could only have one captain, regardless of rank, and officers aboard a ship not their own with the rank but not the title of 'captain' usually accepted an honorary promotion in conversation. Mal was sure this man knew it, too. "Officer, it's clear you're not goin to tell us what you're lookin for. But I'd take it as a kindness if we could put our hands down, at least, and take a load off. Looks like your business here is gonna take a while."

The officer gestured to a pair of crates well away from the cryo box. "There. Don't move unless I tell you." A rifle tracked each of them to their seats.

One of the soldiers returned down the catwalk stairs with Kaylee, who looked terrified enough to melt the heart of any man, even the officer in charge. "Easy, miss. No one's going to hurt you. Just take a seat."

Another soldier escorted the Shepherd through the lower hatch; the officer glanced at the preacher and stiffened again. "What business brings you aboard this ship, Padre?"

"Missionary work, Commodore. Bringing the Word to those need to hear it."

"And I imagine this ship goes where they need to hear it more than most." The man continued to examine the ship's papers. Mal wondered at his old-fashioned term of address, and noted that he didn't correct Book about his rank. "Your captain's a sloppy record keeper, at least as regards cargo and passenger manifests. When did you take ship, and where?"

"From Persephone over a year ago."

He nodded slightly. "Southdown Abbey, I presume?"

"Correct."

A pause. "Which wing were your quarters in?"

"I moved around a bit. My last room was in the east wing, top floor." The two locked eyes, and Mal decided the officer wouldn't be asking Book for ID; seemed the preacher had already presented credentials of some sort. "Might I ask the reason behind this unusual treatment?"

"Soon, Padre. Wait for it." Mal also noted that the officer hadn't ordered the Shepherd into a seat.

One of the junior officers stepped through the hatch from the infirmary and passenger country. He beckoned to the senior officer. The older man glanced at Mal and turned that way. "Come with me."

Followed by a guard, Mal and the ranking officer stepped through behind the other officer. The man in charge paused at the infirmary door. "Fancy setup for an old tramp freighter. Looks well-stocked, too."

"We spend a lot of time out in the Wild," Mal answered. "Don't like the idea of one of my people dyin just because we're too far away from a med center." River's exotic and expensive meds were out of their case and distributed among the commoner drugs in the cupboards.

The junior officer was waiting at the starboard passenger dorm where Simon's and River's rooms were. The officer said to Mal, "You have any passengers?"

"Aside from the Shepherd and the Companion? Not this trip."

"Why not?"

"Seemed nobody wanted to come here. Now I see why."

The junior officer led the way to River's room and slid the door open. "What's all this?"

Mal didn't step forward. He knew what the men were looking at: All of River's and Simon's belongings tossed haphazardly on the bed and floor. "Dead storage. Passengers leave the damnedest things behind. We hang on to it for a while, give em a chance to send for it. But a lot of it goes unclaimed."

"Just leave it behind, eh?"

Mal nodded. "The big passenger lines got warehouses full of this sort of truck. But they auction it off after a while. We just divvy it up or sell it to some second-hand shop."

The man gave him a thoughtful look, but just made a turning-around gesture, and the soldier guarding Mal stepped back. As they headed out of the passenger dorm, they saw Wash being escorted down the fore companionway by a trooper. "Um, Captain, We've got a kind of standoff in crew quarters. Jayne won't leave his room, and the fellows at his door seem a _bit_ reluctant to enter his den. He already tossed a practice grenade through the hatch at them when they opened it."

Mal glanced at the officer, who returned a stony expression. "Officer, let me talk to him. I can do it from the infirmary by com."

The officer looked at him through hooded eyes. "Old war buddy?"

"Hardly. Don't think he was in it. But he's got an arsenal down there, and I pay him to be suspicious of strangers."

In the infirmary, a quick glance told him the place had been gone through, but with a light hand. A phial containing one of River's meds stood in a rack on the counter with half a dozen others. He punched the intercom button at the door. "Jayne?"

"_What the hell's goin on, Captain? We been boarded?_"

"We have, but not by bandits. Those are Federal marshals you're playin with, and you're puttin my ship at risk. Disarm and come up and join the rest of us." He turned to see the officer studying him.

"Your ship has an interesting name. Serenity Valley was where we broke the Independent Army's back on Hera. Quite a battle."

"So I've been told."

"Your mate wears a bootlace around her neck, but not you. Any chance you own a brown duster instead?"

Mal felt his jaw muscles jump. "Never saw a reason to get rid of it. It's right durable, and still fits me fine."

"I daresay it does."

"But it's not part of a uniform anymore. Alliance has been getting in my way most of my life, but I reckon it's here to stay, so now I mostly stay out of its way instead."

"Well, perhaps you haven't been dodging as cleverly as you think." He turned and headed back towards the cargo bay.

In the hold, Mal saw even more Feds aboard. A pair of them had odd gadgets consisting of small suitcases cabled to slender wands that they were pointing at the floor and walls and ceiling. All six of the floor-level hidey-holes had been opened, the cover plates resting against the walls. "Huh. Thought there was only two of those. All kinds of little nooks on this ship. Don't suppose we'll ever find em all."

"Yes, we will," the officer said confidently.

"Well, if you find anything in em, they belonged to an earlier owner."

"Well, then, you'd better hope the earlier owner wasn't up to anything shady." The officer glanced again at the Shepherd, who was still standing, speaking with one of the minor officers and seeming more like one of the investigators than the investigated.

A guard backed through the hatch behind them, his rifle trained on the doorway. Jayne came through the hatch and hesitated, surveying the scene. A trooper behind him pushed at him without moving him. "Go _on_."

Jayne scoffed. "All big and tough now, eh? Which one a ya screamed like a girl when I tossed that grenade up the ladder well?"

Mal sat down again, waiting. Time passed while the Feds crawled all through the ship. Mal imagined there was an inspection party suited up and roving the hull as well. The officers conferred in low voices at a slight remove, occasionally glancing their way, most often at him and Book.

The head officer turned to the Shepherd. "I'd like to have a word with you in private."

Shepherd Book's eyelids lowered a touch. "I'll be glad to take your confession, but perhaps it should wait until your business here is concluded."

The man stilled. "As you wish, Padre." He turned away and gestured at the crew's seats. "What's in those?"

"Not cargo." Mal glanced at each of his crewfolk, meeting their eyes, gauging their composure, urging calm. "General supplies. We break em out as we need em."

The officer turned to Zoë. "Stand up."

The first mate stood with eyes only for the uniformed man in front of her, as if the trooper standing two steps away training his rifle on her didn't exist. Wash, a crate away, also tried to stand, but was forced back down.

The man gestured another officer over, followed by a trooper. "She was the first to take a seat. Let's see if there's a reason she picked this one."

The junior officer snapped the catches and lifted the lid. Inside lay an assortment of boxes, bottles, and cans, many marked with the Blue Sun logo. He selected a bottle and examined the label, then opened it and examined the contents. He did the same with several other containers. Then he turned to the 'Commodore'. "Detergent, lubricant, some catalysts and enzyme mixtures for their recycling system. Housekeeping goods."

"Open them all."

The crew were stood up and herded to the back of the hold while uniformed men opened the crates and went through them. Eventually, satisfied, they put the contents more or less back in order and closed them. The crew were directed to sit again; this time, Wash sat with his wife, and Jayne with Kaylee, who leaned into him for comfort.

One of the junior officers touched a finger to his ear for a moment, then stepped to the commander. "Outside crews report the hull's clean, nothing stashed or hidden."

"Well, Captain Reynolds," the senior officer said, addressing him by name and title for the first time, "your ship is squeaky clean, I must say. Most freebooters leave something suspicious or objectionable lying around, but, aside from the surplus of weapons aboard, you look exactly like what you claim to be." He beckoned Mal over to the cryo box. "No more foreplay. Open it."

Mal kept his poker face firmly in place as he turned the latches on the lid and put a hand on the handle that would break the cryo seal and raise the lid enough to slide off. "This ain't right. We've done nothing wrong, been charged with no crime. Now I'm being forced to forfeit half my shipping fee for nothing."

"There'll be charges aplenty in a moment, I think," the officer said, standing close behind him with his subordinates and a pair of armed troopers another step back.

Mal rested his hands on the lid, hesitating. To a suspicious mind, no doubt, he seemed reluctant, but he was just savoring the moment before he pushed the lid off and showed this martinet an empty box. Finally, he took a breath and shoved the lid back.

The explosion took him off his feet.


	6. In Conclusion

River sat in the pilot's seat of the shuttle, curtain closed tightly behind her, gazing idly at the activity beyond the window. She raised her cup to her lips without drinking and set it down again.

Behind her, she heard a deep male voice say, "Apologies for my late arrival, Lady. There were… formalities at the dock. We've had word of the arrival of criminals of the worst sort, and security between station and all vessels is rather tight right now."

"Not at all," Inara answered smoothly. "I'm pleased to see that you exempt no one from your rules. It shows you believe in what you're doing." A clink, probably from Inara's visitor; the Companion, River was sure, would never be so graceless. "If it pleases you, our time together will begin at my door, rather than the appointed hour."

"That would please me _very_ much, Lady."

The two chatted idly and graciously, their voices becoming quieter as they progressed into more intimate conversation. River split her attention between the room behind her and the bustle among the gantries and fabrication modules. As she gazed outside at the station and the stars, she felt faint impressions from the pair inside. She saw Sung through Inara's eyes: a middle-aged aristocrat of military bearing, stern and alone and in desperate need of someone around whom he could relax without fear of indiscretion; she saw Inara: a child-goddess of love and pleasure, beautiful and otherworldly, seeming to glow with an inner light as she led him to a couch. River noted that Inara had altered her respirations to fall in synch with her guest's, and wondered if it was some arcane practice of Companion discipline meant to draw them closer. While these thoughts pressed at the back of her mind, she studied the various activities outside, matching what she saw with her academic knowledge of terraforming operations.

After a time, a spacesuited figure climbed hand-over-hand up a boom in the middle distance, legs free and bent in zero gee; with a human figure to give it perspective, she judged that the boom was perhaps ten meters away. The worker reached a large square box, opened it, and began doing something with the wiring inside. After a time, the movements of the figure's hands slowed to a stop. The suit's faceplate was half-silvered, so she couldn't see the face of the person inside, but River was suddenly sure she was being stared at.

She smiled without looking at him (she assumed her admirer was a male) and raised her cup to her lips. Behind her, the only sound she now heard was Inara's voice, murmuring. River kept her borrowed filters at their most restrictive, but still felt the vague stirrings that she ofttimes felt around Kaylee or Zoë, and, rarely, Inara, when they were thinking of sex, a strange empty hunger that made her want to _surround_ something. But it was overridden by a growing sensation she sometimes got around Wash or the captain or even Simon when the appropriate females were nearby, but most emphatically from Jayne, a distinct_ male_ flavor that made her feel undressed and on display, with ghost fingers on her skin.

She lowered the cup and ran a tongue over her lips, and felt the strange sensation of reflected desire take a bump. She raised her eyes briefly to her voyeur out on the gantry, and watched him climb a few meters higher, the door of the junction box still hanging open below. She calculated that, from where he'd been working, his view of her through the shuttle's window had ended above her waist, and decided he was trying to get a better look.

Her heightened sexual sensitivity and recent penchant for mischief combined into a sudden impulse. The robe she wore was a silky loose-sleeved affair held around her only by a slender cord. It was part of Inara's after-sex wardrobe, worn as a parting caress of her client's ego: she knew her male customers usually preferred to leave their women, Companions especially, somewhat disarranged by their attentions. Inara hadn't instructed River to undress before putting it on, but she knew that the older girl never wore anything underneath, and thought it best to be appropriately attired for her impersonation. River fussed with the wrap a bit as if it had become hot or uncomfortable, loosening it slightly at the neck and exposing the tops of her shoulders. Then she crossed her legs, and the lower half of the garment parted, baring her left leg to just above the knee.

The suited man stopped as if he'd run into a wall. River was absolutely sure that most of the second-hand lust washing over her was now coming from her observer. Still ignoring him, she lifted her slippered left foot and planted it on the console, raising her knee almost to her chin, and felt the silken material slide down her thigh like a caressing hand, falling away and exposing her leg to the hip. The heat of his attention slapped at her like overpressure from an explosion and made her gasp. The voyeur lost his grip on the gantry and floated free, thrashing. Alarmed, she stood and pressed close to the glass, watching him drift by almost within arm's length. He straightened, facing the window, and gave her a thumbs-up sign, and she knew somehow he was grinning. A new impression found its way into her mind, her own image as her voyeur saw her: an unreal creature of love and beauty not meant for partnership with mortal men save as brief gifts of grace – a Companion. She ducked her head and covered her face with one hand, both as a pretense of embarrassment and to hide her features, until he passed out of sight. She was surprised to feel excess heat under her fingers from her cheek.

The sounds behind the curtain were now rhythmic and nonverbal and rather less quiet. River sat down again and tried to concentrate on something besides the events in the next room, but the view out the window no longer held her attention. Unbidden, an image of Jayne in the shower came to her mind, and she felt warmth spread from her belly to her thighs as she imagined them pressed together naked in the streaming water. She suddenly realized that she was still awash in secondhand desire… but now it came from Inara. Not for the big mercenary; that was just how River translated the input into a familiar form. She realized that what Inara was sharing with this Commander Sung was more than a clever imitation of desire; she had reached into herself to somehow fashion love and lust for this near stranger twice her age, and now wanted nothing more than to give whatever was in her power to give to make him happy. And River was certain the Companion would feel the same way about the next client whose flatteries – and cash – she accepted. This, River decided, was what set Companions apart from mere prostitutes, more than the years of education in fine arts and training in seduction technique.

_She's right_, she thought. _Kaylee could never learn to do what she's doing. Could I, with all my talent for mastering difficult subjects and physical disciplines? Could I learn to master myself so completely?_

_Would I want to? Even for __her__ reasons, __her__ reward?_

-0-

WHOOMPH.

A huge jet of gray-brown slurry erupted from the cryo box, knocking down _Serenity's_ captain and hosing down the men who had stood behind him. The sudden stench that filled the bay left no doubt of its composition: half-recycled sewage, even more pungent than the raw material. One of the junior officers bent and retched; the other stood with his arms out from his sides, eyes wide in his excrement-coated face. The troopers in the rear stepped back, their faces masks of disgust, releasing their hold on their weapons to flick the smelly mess off their hands. The commander, whose hat had been knocked off, frantically squeegeed crap off his scalp and face and flung it to the deck. "What the _hell_ is this, Reynolds?"

Mal, still on his hands and knees, coughed and spat and blew hard through his nostrils. His hair fell into his eyes, dripping. "You think _I_ got a rutting explanation for this?" He said shrilly. His hand slipped in a greasy brown puddle, and he nearly kissed the stinking deck.

The Shepherd rubbed a small spot off his cheek with his sleeve, wincing. "I think we should clean up and compose ourselves before we proceed. Unless the Commodore feels a need to collect all this for evidence."

Kaylee jumped up, ignored by her astonished guard, and picked her way across the fouled and reeking deck to her captain. She pulled a rag from her back pocket and bent to wipe at his face while he continued to try to clear his mouth and nose. The rag was soaked in moments. She dropped it. "Captain, we'll have to break lock and open the hold to space to get this luh suh cleaned out of her."

Mal glared up at the commander. "That okay with you? Or would that break a rule of some sort?"

The man looked from Mal to the Shepherd, realization showing on his face under the coating of excrement. The Shepherd shrugged. "This isn't what you were told to expect, obviously. If I were you, I'd be thinking of some very pointed questions to ask my informant right about now. Especially since it seems clear the Captain wasn't the one meant to open that box."

-0-

An hour later, _Serenity_ was back at dock and mostly clean. The crew had swept up and shoveled away the freeze-dried residue that remained after pressure had been re-established in the cargo bay; what smell remained there was perhaps more a product of imagination than anything else.

The odor coming out of the shower room - mixed with an endless string of Chinese curses - was all too real.

Kaylee, a large plastic bottle in hand, stepped past the hatch and crossed the floor that Jayne, clearly in a bad mood, was mopping for the fifty-leventh time trying to get rid of the smell left behind by the captain's passage from the cargo bay to the shower. "You okay?"

"Wish I'd a seen it comin, is all," the big merc grumbled as he slapped the mop on the deck. "Could of enjoyed it more."

She knocked on the shower door. "Cap'n? That officer fella sent over a bottle of stuff to take the smell off your skin. Says it works like a charm."

The cursing shut off. The door opened a crack, and a dripping hand reached for the bottle, grasped it, and withdrew. The door closed.

Kaylee wrinkled her nose. "Sure hope it works. I don't know what else we can do. Had to space his clothes."

Jayne stared at the door. "Let's keep our options open."

-0-

Dressed in fresh clothes and feeling scrubbed raw, _Serenity's_ captain met its unofficial chaplain returning to the ship from his "confessional" with the boarding officer. Mal was fairly certain what had passed between the two men had more to do with the Shepherd's old sins than the officer's. "All went well, I assume, since you came back."

"Rather. They'll want to question the rest of the crew, but I'm sure the investigation is aimed more towards your mysterious employer at this point. I've been asked to convey an offer of compensation."

Mal raised his eyebrows. "Compensation."

"Hush money, really. It's obvious you were never meant to be paid what you were offered for the shipment. But the good Commodore has offered to assume the contract and take delivery." The preacher's eye gleamed. "For the price of the penalty for opening the box."

"Pyen juh duh jiou cha wen." Mal considered partly refilling the box from his private stock prior to delivery.

"Quite so. You know Alliance officials; have to have the last word on everything."

"Reckon we'll take it. It'll still be enough to fit us out proper, with enough extra fuel cells to go after _Ellsinore_ before the air gets stuffy or they get lost in the Black. So long as we don't have to jump through too many hoops for the money."

"Transferred to your station account already." The old man passed over a palm-sized rectangle of plastic. "I accepted on your behalf. This station being Alliance territory, the only currency tendered is electronic, just like on the Central Worlds. On the plus side, you can order everything the station has to offer right over the Cortex."

"That does have its attractions. Then again, so does the notion of doing my shopping tramping all over station as a guest of the good Commodore. In my duster."

Jayne's voice came from the catwalk above. "So we're gettin paid after all." He stepped along the upper works, headed for the galley. "You hear about people bein dipped in go se and comin out smellin like a rose, but I never met one till now."

Card in hand, Mal wasted no time gathering up Kaylee and heading to the station's commercial sections. They bought fuel cells, all the old girl could carry, and a few essential parts the little mechanic had been begging for for months. The smile they brought to her face rivaled the one she'd given him when he'd bought her that ridiculous dress on Persephone, and went a long way towards lightening his mood.

Then they visited a dry goods emporium for foodstuffs. Selection was scant; Halifax produced nothing yet, so all edibles were imported, and their money wouldn't stretch to buy fresh food at the going prices. They were putting packages of protein powder on the counter when Kaylee looked over his shoulder, eyes wide.

"I see you didn't waste any time spending the money," said the Alliance captain behind him.

Mal turned to meet eyes. "Not much choice in that. Kaylee, take our haul to the ship. Get ready to pull out."

When the girl left, the man went on, "Did you get everything you need?"

"Everything we need, but not everything we could use. If it wouldn't cost me more than I've already paid, I wouldn't mind hearin an explanation. What was this all about?"

The uniformed man looked across the counter at the shopkeeper, who took the hint and did a fast fade. Then he turned back to Mal. "Seven weeks ago, a cryo shipment of transplant organs was hijacked on its way to the Londinium Surgical Center. Two men died in the heist, and several patients shortly after as a result."

"Huh. And you thought…"

The man shrugged. "We picked up the criminals' trail at Persephone. We were sure the goods had gone out on one of three tramp freighters. We apprehended two of them and searched without finding anything. The third never arrived at its stated destination, just disappeared off the grid. That slowed us down a bit, but we were searching every place it might have gone and sent word ahead, and it was just a matter of time before we had them in hand.

"Sure enough, we got word that the ship we were looking for was stranded on Creighton's Moon. Authorities boarded the ship, but came up dry again. But an informant claimed that a cryo box matching the description had been offloaded two days before and put on a ship for Halifax."

Mal felt his lips twitch. "And we made perfect suspects, I don't doubt. Ex-Independent scum livin on the fringes of civilization and such."

Another shrug. "There are a lot of stories about you and your ship, Captain. Some of them may still be true."

"And now there'll be a couple more, I reckon. Spose a few fellas'll grin and pinch their noses as I walk by, till I give em a better reason to hold em."

"Not on this station." The officer looked darkly out the store's front window at a few passersby who slowed to peer inside and hurry past. "The ones who did this, they think they're smart. Sent us off on a wild goose chase, used you for a decoy, and set that little practical joke to make sure we knew they'd put one over on us." His lips thinned. "But we'll find the real goods, and whoever set this up, count on it."

"Hope you're right. Thanks for the cleaner, by the way."

"Least I could do." Eyes still on the window and the corridor beyond, he said, "I lost a brother in the War."

"Didn't lose any family, but I lost plenty of friends. And my country. That's done now. Me and mine just try to make a livin and keep flyin. No big plans, no fancy ideas. Just folk gettin by."

"Well, I do wish you well, Captain. Just so long as you stay on the right side of the law for your living." The man headed for the door.

-0-

Mal stood on the cargo bay landing while the shuttle made its approach starboard. Inara had made reassuring sounds over the ship-to-ship without mentioning her passenger, but he couldn't feel right until the shuttle was back in its bay and he saw them both with his own eyes.

"Shuttle's secure," Zoë called from the cargo bay floor, but he'd already heard the thump and whine of the little craft being drawn inside. He stood, arms folded, trying to look like he was loitering instead of waiting.

"The ambassador graces you with her presence." River came through the shuttle access tarted up in one of Inara's costumes, a thin shiny robe with a gold cord for a belt. She descended the stairs with an easy grace that looked familiar, but not on her.

He tried not to look disapproving as she glided up to him. "Well, don't you look like a proper Companion. It's a good thing your brother's not-"

She stood on tiptoe, rested her forearms on his shoulders, twined her fingers at the back of his neck, and pulled their faces together. They nearly overbalanced, and his arms went around her by reflex. She kissed him fiercely, tongue flicking in and out just once, then brushed her lips against his before letting go and stepping back.

The air disappeared, and his backside bumped against the rail. "Ai ya… what was _that_?"

She stared at him, wide-eyed. "Kissing lesson from Inara. Not the sort I expected. But instructive." He flushed to see that the robe's belt had come undone and the garment had parted a hand's width; he studied his shoes as she wrapped up again.

He felt witless and confused. He'd have sworn his feelings for the doctor's little sister had never been of a romantic nature, yet the feel of her lips and body pressed up against him had left him so unsteady it seemed like the grav was off-kilter. "How… Why did…"

"Because she can't." She retied the cord at her waist and descended the stairs towards the main cargo deck while he gripped the rail, reaching for his composure.

He glanced up at the hatch to Inara's shuttle, and saw her looking down with an unreadable expression just before she turned back inside.

-0-

_Serenity_ uncoupled from dock, proceeded under port control to a safe distance, and fired up the drive, leaving Halifax Station behind. Once out of scan range, the ship executed a radical course change and boosted out into the Black. A few hours after, _Ellsinore _passed within a few thousand kilometers of the station on approximately the same course, silent and unseen but at meteoric speed. It caught up with the freighter four hours later.

Mal and Zoë and Jayne suited up in the cargo bay, evacuated the compartment, and opened the belly hatch. Wash had maneuvered the ship so close that, when the doors drew aside, _Ellsinore's_ hull filled the view.

"Shame that little runabout doesn't have a lock, doc," Mal said over his suit com as they moved fuel cells from _Serenity's _receivers to _Ellsinore's_. "Here you are a spit from home, and you're gonna to have to ride all the way back to Creighton's Moon to get aboard."

"_I presume you got my message_."

"Mostly. Your wave faded out before we got the bit about the client, but it wasn't hard to figure out. How'd it go with that Underground fella?"

"_Well, I left in a hurry. But I suppose River and I will have more time with him on the trip to Boros._"

Mal secured the last spare cell. "Well and good. I just hope when he meets her she's who he expects."

-0-

Shepherd Book was in his room, seeking guidance and understanding in his Bible, when a soft tap came at his door, accompanied by the Captain's voice. "Shepherd?"

Book took a deep breath and let it out, then put the book aside. The Captain had never visited Book in his room; the preacher imagined the coming conversation would be unique as well. He slid the partition aside. "Captain. Come in. To what do I owe this visit?"

Mal stepped in and slid the panel shut behind him. "I'd say you owe it to havin this wing of the passenger dorm to yourself, which makes this the most private place I can think of to talk to you without meetin behind a locked door." He sat uninvited on Book's only chair. "Shepherd, I got a mystery. What happened when I pushed back the lid of that box was one _big_ damn surprise. Someone on this ship rigged it up out of the sludge from our first-stage recycling tank and homemade explosives. And a damn fine explosive charge it was, too, sent everything inside the box sprayin out in just one direction without doin any other damage. I seen combat engineers that good, but not with the kind of stuff we got in stores. Kaylee _might_ be able, but she's the least likely to pull a prank like that. That leaves me lookin at people aboard whose skill sets I'm not sure about."

Book nodded. "And your conclusions?"

Mal looked suddenly uncomfortable. "That we're still gonna have to keep a close eye on River. She's done a number of downright unsettlin and pranksome things since that last dose a couple weeks ago. The next one might not be so harmless – not that I think she'd mean any harm. Truth to tell, that whole environmental disaster probly convinced the Fed a lot more than an empty box would have."

"As well as assuring that no forensic evidence of the former contents would turn up inside."

Mal stopped. "Huh. Spose so. Anyway..."

"Made him feel ashamed of himself for judging you so harshly on an informant's whisper, too. For a war veteran, he's been fair accommodating towards a former Browncoat, especially one with a reputation for starting barfights on Unification Day. Sorry for you, even."

"Well, I was feeling damn sorry for myself at the time, got to-" the captain stilled and locked eyes with the preacher. "I'll be damned."

"I sincerely hope not."

"Why didn't you tell me? Or anybody?"

"Because your… unrehearsed reactions were impossible to disbelieve. Don't tell me you could have avoided flinching or moving out of the way a bit when you opened it if you'd known." He turned slightly away. "My apologies, Captain. I'm prepared to leave the ship at our next destination if you feel it's necessary."

"No." But he appeared to be mulling it over. "Does anyone else know?"

"I haven't told, but I'm sure they're speculating. Clearly I didn't think that part of it through. I'm afraid they'll come to the same conclusion you did, and lay the blame on River. I can't allow-"

"Which she will gladly accept." River slid the panel aside. She was back in Kaylee garb, the Shepherd noted. He also noted that the captain stood and backed away as she entered, as if she were hot and might burn him if she got too close. "Sorry, Cap'n. But you can never be sure a conversation's private when I'm around."

"Clearly I'm losin control of my ship," he said. "Next we'll be puttin my every decision to a vote."

"As if Zoë'd put up with that." She smiled. "Don't you dare."

"Don't dare what?"

"Call me InKayRiv. Or I'll tell everyone about that time on the ranch."

"I'm leavin while I can still retreat in good order." The captain slid the panel open and looked at him. "We may need to talk more about this later."

"Or not."

The door slid shut. River waited, facing the closed panel. "I don't actually know about any time on the ranch, but it figures he'd have a boyhood story that embarrasses him." She turned to him, giving his Bible a brief glance. "You're only human, man of the cloth or not. Ain't so bad to feel a little satisfaction that the captain opened the box instead of the Alliance officer." She touched his hand. "He introduced her as a whore without even bothering to give you her name. Sometimes he's such a boy around her."

-0-

Albert Sessions was a worried man. When _Ellsinore_ grounded at the landing field on Creighton's Moon and Dickie wrestled the hatch open, he stood and felt a familiar deep ache in his injured leg. It seemed likely he'd be facing several angry men soon, each with his own grievance, and, for the life of him, Sessions couldn't decide which man he wanted to face least.

Thompson, the Core World merchant prince who was also an Underground bigwig, would likely be the first. He and young Tam had exchanged waves once the ship had got close enough to do without the relay beacon. The messages were cryptic, but Sessions could draw some good conclusions just the same. The young doctor and Sessions' influential client had a history of some sort, which meant the sister probably did too. And Sessions had flat refused to help them. Accounts of what the Alliance had expected to find had lifted the hair on his forearms, thinking of the consequences to all aboard. Sessions was sure that, were his and Thompson's roles reversed, he wouldn't be in a forgiving mood.

_Serenity's_ portside shuttle was already on its way down. Sessions felt sure of the mood of its passengers as well. The Cortex had carried stories of _Serenity's_ boarding and its conclusion. No one aboard _Ellsinore_ had so much as cracked a smile at the description of Captain Malcolm Reynolds after the explosion. Sessions had lied to the man, taken advantage of his tender feelings towards the girl that had been so obvious when the captain had spoken of her in the cargo bay. He'd set him and his crew up for a life sentence in Alliance prison or a trip to the auction block. Sessions thought it likely that the presence of young Tam aboard _Ellsinore_ was the only reason _Serenity_ had come for them in the Black instead of letting them coast on into the endless dark.

Then there was Duvie, a brutish lout whose displeasure Sessions wouldn't give a hoot about if his older brother Kersey wasn't a 'fixer' for a branch of the Underground, a branch Sessions was careful not to cross. Kersey had retained _Ellsinore's_ services as a means of extricating Duvie from whatever mess his petty scheming or disregard for propriety was likely to get him into on this little world. It might not be essential to be on hand the instant the big ape showed up; then again, fast transport offworld might be the only thing keeping a noose from settling around the shagua's neck. If Duvie had suffered capture or other harm because Sessions hadn't been around to pick him up, even having been hijacked wouldn't be excuse enough for Kersey.

The hatch dropped to form a short stair to the ground. Thompson stood at the bottom. Dickie moved forward towards the opening, but Sessions waved him back. "No," he said in a low voice. "We don't need to worry about a physical threat from this man. Likely we've seen our last bit of work from him, though." He stepped past and descended the six steps to the hard-packed gravel.

A second later, his butt and shoulders impacted painfully with the stairs. He just managed to keep his head from banging them as well, which seemed a miracle of control, since it no longer felt securely attached to his neck.

Thompson stood over him, hands on hips. "Don't get up just yet, Albert. I have some things to say to you, and I'm sure you'll pay closer attention with my boot poised half a swing from your crotch.

"First. If you're going to continue to work for me, this will be the last time you ever put another man's interests ahead of mine. If you find yourself faced with another such conflict of interest, you come to me and we'll resolve it. But you're my man first, and anyone else's a distant second. Dong ma?"

Sessions nodded. It hurt, but he didn't trust his voice just now, and having his assent come out in a squeak was something he wouldn't hazard.

"Second." Thompson's eyes flicked up towards the hatch. "If you run across this boy or his sister again and they ask for your help, _give_ it. Don't count the cost until you come to me for it. I guarantee you generous compensation. But you will _not_ leave these two hanging ever again. _Dong luh mah_?"

He found his voice. "Shiia." Since that sounded all right, he added, "If this is how you negotiate trade deals, it's no wonder you finish up early."

Thompson smiled at that. "It hardly ever comes to crotch kicking. Among that sort, I can produce the same effect by threatening to make them poor." He reached down, offering a hand. He pulled Sessions to his feet with surprising strength and watched the agent brush the dust off his clothes. "By the way. Your other client came by the warehouse shortly after you left. Duvie, the name was?"

Sessions stopped brushing. "Where is he?"

"Gone, and quite satisfied. His arrival was opportune, actually. I'd just received word that my absence had been discovered. Not much of a surprise; I knew my competitors have spies in the firm."

The young doctor stepped off the stairs and reached for Thompson's right hand. The man ignored the boy's manipulating of the fingers. "Tempery sort of fellow. He seemed quite miffed that you weren't waiting, until I explained that you were making special arrangements for his transport. The next day, a passenger shuttle for the _Star of Sihnon_ dropped into the field with a VIP ticket for him. He agreed not to let himself be identified boarding, and to keep to his rooms during the trip, which suited his purpose and mine. My aides left with him, and one of them _was_ identified; he made sure of it. So now Universal Transport thinks I'm headed for Athens, and your man Duvie is living it up in the Chairman's Suite on the _Star_ and thinking very kindly of you. Ow." He winced as Simon pressed a knuckle.

The boy let go of Thompson's hand. "I'll want a better look at that once we're aboard _Serenity_." A breathy whine from overhead began to fill the air.

Thompson nodded. "Never strike a man's face with a closed hand, my boy. Unless you really need to. Sorry, Albert. But I needed your undivided attention." He rubbed his knuckles. "And besides, the look on your face was hilarious. Made it impossible to stay angry at you."

"Glad to be made to look ridiculous for a good cause."

_Serenity's_ shuttle passed overhead and settled to the ground just fifty yards from _Ellsinore_, raising a thin pall of dust and briefly bathing them in heat. The landing was a lot closer than usual for two craft sharing a field, but, as Sessions had noted before, their pilot was good. And he supposed they were in a hurry to see him.

Dickie and Deke tromped down the stairs, armed and eyeing the shuttle. Again, Sessions waved them back.

Dickie drew his pistol out an inch and replaced it, checking the draw. "Not gonna try some reassuring words on me again, are you, Al?"

"Just stay here, g'rammit." He started towards the shuttle, leg throbbing enough to make him limp. Dickie and Deke were good men, and fair handy with a gun, but he wasn't about to let them stand between him and _this_ bunch.

The shuttle's hatch opened, and Reynolds stepped out, wearing his brown duster. Sessions caught a glimpse of gun belt underneath. The woman, Zoë, followed close behind with her hand cannon holstered at her hip. The big deckhand, Jayne, stood at the open hatch, surveying the field with a rifle in his hands that looked capable of taking down low-flying aircraft. Sessions quickened his step to close with them before his men got second thoughts and followed him.

Reynolds and Zoë walked out to meet him like people on a mission. At two paces' distance, the captain stopped and offered a hand. "Well met, friend."

Thoroughly surprised, Sessions stumbled to a stop and took it. The man's grip was as firm as the time they'd clasped hands in _Serenity's_ cargo bay. "Got to say, Reynolds, I wasn't sure how this meeting would go."

"You're somewhat of a scoundrel, Sessions, but that don't make you a bad man. And I know what it's like to take a job from Niska. What's important is the choice you made when you found out the whole of it. That was a hell of a chance you took to warn us, but you saved us all by it. That's not somethin I'll forget."

Sessions swallowed, but he wasn't the least bit inclined to put his life at risk again by correcting Reynolds' take on recent events. Still… "It was the boy. He figured it out. He didn't explain till we were on our way to you. But he's a hard man to say 'no' to."

-0-

"It's not something I say about most folk," Kaylee said as she dipped her hands in a sinkful of dinner dishes and sudsy water, "but our passenger makes me nervous. He's sure a different kind of revolutionary."

The Shepherd took a clean wet plate from her fingers and wiped it with a towel. "Oh? How many revolutionaries have you met?"

She dived for another. "Put that way, I guess I don't know, do I? 'Nara, you done with that?"

"Not yet." Inara tarried alone at the cleared table, a mug of lukewarm tea corralled between her hands, seeming deep in thought. It was worrisome, Kaylee thought, that her friend had been so quiet and solitary and inward-looking lately, at least when she wasn't with a client. Kaylee hoped she was having second thoughts about leaving the ship at Sihnon. "I'll wash it when I'm done. You don't have to pick up after me like a servant, mei mei. You should let me take a turn at the sink once in a while."

Kaylee scoffed as she scrubbed a plate. "As if I'd ever let you stick those hands in hot water full of knives and such. Sides, I like doin dishes. A daily soakin in dishwater's all that keeps mine halfway clean." She handed the plate to the Shepherd with a smile. "Back to Mr. Thompson. We mighta had Underground folk aboard before and never knew it, but I'm fair sure we never hauled a Core World tycoon. You can tell he's a fine gentleman just by the way he walks. But it seems like he fancies young girls. I'm not sure what to make of that."

"Really." The Shepherd's eyes picked up a flinty look that made Kaylee hesitate as she passed the plate. Book was a darling man, but sometimes he made her wonder if preaching was his second career, and what the first one had been. "Why do you say that?"

"Well, I guess it's natural he spends so much time with River - I mean, he sticks close to Simon too. But he pays me so much attention when he's around, it's like he's cockin his hat for me. He's a perfect gentleman, but…"

"I wouldn't worry about him," Inara murmured into her mug. "He married young, and he's devoted to his wife. I doubt he's ever experienced another woman, not even a Companion."

"He _told_ you that?"

"No. I just know."

Kaylee passed over the last dish and opened the drain, sending the dirty liquid to the recycling tank to be turned into tomorrow's drinking water. "Why is he always looking me over and chatting me up, then? It's not all in my head."

The Companion tipped her head slightly, her substitute for a shrug. "Perhaps you remind him of his daughter."

-0-

River stood in the shower, rag in one hand and soap in the other, letting the hot water beat down on her, soaking her hair and sending some of her muzzy thinking down the drain. Her mental fog didn't alarm her, because she knew it was the product of simple fatigue rather than returning schizophrenia.

No one in the passenger dorms had slept well last night, their first en route to Boros. The half-formed thoughts of her fellow passengers had prevented her from achieving more than a fitful doze for most of the night. Then, towards the end of the sleep period, a sharp thought from Simon had stabbed into her and brought her feet to the floor. _Nightmare._

She'd opened his door. He'd been wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, and the cover had lain crumpled on the floor at the foot of the bed. He'd been asleep but dreaming badly, stirring and turning his head about. Some flavor of his dream had told her that he'd taken something to help him sleep, which he almost never did. A tear had glistened at his temple.

The images of his dream had broken through her barriers. She'd seen them caught at Halifax, seen her dragged away to be strapped to an examination table, screaming, as men with scalpels and syringes and drills pressed close. She'd seen Mal and Wash and the Shepherd and sweet Jayne led off in chains to hard labor in a barren landscape. She'd seen Kaylee and Zoë and Inara, differently bound and leashed like dogs, being led off the auction block to labor of a different sort.

Of his own fate, she'd seen nothing. In his mind, there was no life beyond their capture.

She'd gathered the coverlet and got in bed beside him, snuggling up to his back, pulling it over them both as she'd put her arms around his shoulders. "Shh," she'd said softly, pulling closer, trying to still his shivering. "It's all right, gei gei. Everyone's safe now. Go to sleep." She'd stroked his forehead, his hair. His shivers had quieted and his breathing eased.

She'd continued stroking him softly, her hands drifting down his shoulders to the smooth skin of his chest. Her breathing had slowed and deepened. She'd kissed the tear from his temple, savoring the taste, then again, back of his neck, and one hand had strayed to his abdomen. She'd felt the waistband of his pajamas, and one finger had slid under before awareness had frozen her and stopped her breath. _Kaylee filters._

_This won't do_, she'd thought. _I came to give him comfort. He won't be comforted by waking to find his crazy little sister trying to seduce him in his sleep._

She'd pulled away carefully, intending to slip back to her bed. But he'd stirred when she'd tried to slide her arm out from under him, and had placed a hand over hers, trapping her. "River?"

"You had a bad dream," she'd said, trying to keep her voice even and steady while Kaylee-fantasies drifted through her mind.

"What an ironic reversal." He'd turned to face her and taken her face in his hands. "Thank you, mei mei." Then his expression had changed. "What's wrong?"

She'd trembled with the effort to hold back the wave of lust rising up in her. She'd stilled her hands, avoided his eyes, and fought to control her breathing.

"River? What is it? A seizure?" He'd brought his face closer, trying to peer into her eyes. The smallest dart of her head would have brought their mouths together.

She'd closed her eyes. "Be all right. Wait. Give me a moment." _If Kaylee were here, she couldn't resist. If I let go of her and become wholly River, the million voices will rush in and wash me away like a sand castle at the beach. If I jump up and leave, he'll follow, demanding explanations. What can I do?_

The answer came. _Get to work, of course. Gather up your desire and set it aside. Call on your love and your wits to learn what he needs from you and give it to him._

They'd been both sitting up in bed then. His hands had gripped her upper arms. "River, let's go to the infirmary." She'd caught the fear in his voice, and heard the fleeting thought: _she's slipping back. Failed again. What will Father think when he sees her?_

"No." Her breathing had eased. She'd smiled at him and shaken her head gently. "Just a bad moment. All better now." She'd slid up the bed to put her back against the wall and pulled him to her, pressing the side of his face to her bosom. "All better now."

She'd run her fingertips through his hair, a new yet familiar gesture. "I think I'm finally on the mend," she'd said, keeping her voice almost to a whisper so he wouldn't notice the change in it. "The setbacks aren't important. The drug regimen is working just as it should. Time and patience are all we need. You've saved me, baobei."

"You sound so sure." She hadn't been able to see his face, but she'd known he was smiling.

"You make me feel sure." She'd kissed the top of his head. "You are such a special man."

_They're all special to her_, she thought as she lathered up. _I taught myself to borrow from others what was taken from me because I was terrified of the chaos, afraid of losing myself in the maelstrom of impressions that normal people block out with the same unconscious ease with which they send blood from their heart to their lungs. But am I losing myself in a different way? What difference does it make to keep the chaos at bay if I can't be me?_

She felt a puff of cool air. Jayne leaned into the partly open doorway, grinning, a live capture in hand. "Smile."

So she did. She met his eyes, dropped her chin, and slowly turned to him, cocking a hip and putting her hands behind her. She watched his eyes widen and his mouth open, and a fleeting image of Kaylee's face appeared in her mind. _I remind him of her, even in this? Well, why not? He must have seen a thousand naked women. How different could I be?_ "Well, ape man? Are you just going to stand there letting the heat out, or are you coming in?"

He made an animal sound, withdrew, and yanked the door shut. She wondered if he'd destroy the capture to ease the frustration of his plan backfiring. She hoped not. If he didn't have the nerve to keep it under his pillow, perhaps he'd hide it inside his guitar.

_Ridiculous man. Did he really think I'd go hysterical? I've lay in his arms, wetting his chest with my tears and sharing my awfullest fears. What's seeing me without clothes compared to that? _She smiled and resumed her shower, feeling wholly River, at least for a little while.

-0-

"So that's the lay of it," Mal said to the crowded table. Everyone aboard was present, though not seated; there wasn't enough space or seats. "Niska's part in this started as a heist gone bad. He knew he'd never get those stolen organs to market, so instead of dumpin em he decided to drop em in our hands to get his revenge on us."

"Well, that's a relief two ways, I'd say." Shepherd sipped his brew. "No one was murdered to fill that box, and Niska didn't spend a king's ransom to put paid to us."

"He spent enough," Jayne growled as he refilled his mug at the stovetop. "I don't like the idea of spendin the rest of my life lookin over my shoulder, waitin for the next time the little hwundan gets a clever notion. That time we went in there after you, I shoulda took a bandolier fulla grenades and let the air out of his skyplex."

Mal folded his arms. "Don't hold to that, but I do think it's time we dealt with him. But I don't think we need to risk our lives to do it. Niska's a businessman. He's also a rutting coward. He took a little shot at us from a blind, thinking he was safe. We shoot back quick and hard from a direction he doesn't expect, we'll see the last of him." He looked at their passenger. "You can help us with that, Mr. Thompson, if you're of a mind."

"Anything," said the man standing between Simon and River. Mal noted that the sibs were so close at hand, Thompson could have put his arms around them.

Mal shifted. "Well, then, I got a plan."

-0-

Kaylee was installing new parts in the engine room and making up a mental to-do list of tasks elsewhere on the ship. Some were simple, like replacing those pesky screws in the shower latch and gooping them up so they wouldn't work loose again. Another was some heavy and finicky work on the drive pod hydraulics. That one would require an extended stay dirtside or suiting up and spending some time outside.

She kind of looked forward to that. She'd never worn a suit before she came aboard, and she'd fallen in love with the view of the stars through a faceplate, almost like having nothing at all between her and the 'Verse. She only wished Simon shared her enthusiasm. The captain insisted nobody go out alone, and the handsome young doctor would have made a perfect EVA partner if he could only conquer his nerves and keep his eyes open: not only to share the beauty and romance of it, but because a surgeon would surely be a conscientious and careful workmate.

She heard a shoe sole scuff on the lip of the hatch, and turned to see Mr. Thompson, dressed in a fancy getup with a coat and vest and white lace poking out of the sleeves. On anybody else aboard, it would have looked silly; on him, it looked like some kind of uniform. _Formal clothes_, she thought. "May I come in?"

She swallowed and said, "Sure. Just don't touch any switches or such."

"Wouldn't dream of it." He looked around the space. His eyes rested on her hammock, and she felt a sudden ramp-up in her unease._ They're friends, that's for certain, but he wouldn't tell him about that, would he?_ "You spend a lot of time in here."

Unsure what to say or where he was headed, she nodded. "I do. Sometimes I finish a repair job, my bunk seems awful far away." She reminded herself of Inara's estimate of him. _He isn't going to try to corner me in here. But what __does__ he want?_

"You're very conscientious." He smiled at her then, and something about it lessened her unease. "But I have a feeling you don't have much of a maintenance budget."

She shrugged. "Cap'n doesn't ignore me when I say we need something, but sometimes there's no money for it, or none to be had at any price. I do a lot of workarounds."

"An innovator as well, then. I imagine you're glad to be riding herd on a Trace Compression Block instead of a Gurtsler."

"I'll say," she said, warming up to this strange man. "We'd have been stuck in the dirt a dozen times over. You know engines, Mr. Thompson?"

"Alas, no. But I do know maintenance costs, and that lets me tell quality from feioo. Do you ever get any help from the crew?"

"Oh, sure. Any of em'll hand me tools, even Inara. And the Shepherd and Wash know enough to be right helpful sometimes."

"What about Simon? Does he ever come to you and dirty his hands?"

_Dirty his hands._ She resolutely didn't look at the hammock. But she was sure she flushed. "Mr. Thompson, I couldn't answer that, less I know what you're really askin, and why."

The man's eyebrows gathered. "I've said something to offend you. I'm sorry."

She flushed again. "No, I'm the one who's sorry. I mistook you."

The eyebrows went up. "Oh. Please believe me, I would never..." His discomfort disappeared like a shadow. "I've seen the way you look at each other. He's very taken with you, Kaywinnit."

She leaned against the wall and studied her shoes. "He has a hard time showin it."

"That's because of who he is and where he came from."

"I've heard." She looked up to meet the fancy Core World gentleman's eyes. "If he was a Rim boy, we'd be sharin a bunk already. That's the way I am."

"Our courtship rituals have more to do with politics than morality, my dear." He smiled at her again. "I don't doubt they seem stuffy and ridiculous. And they would be, out here, where he lives now. But he's his father's son."

All the excess blood left her face, and a little more. "You know his pa?"

He shrugged. "As well as anyone, I suppose."

"What's he like?"

He considered. "Cultured. Aloof in public. Hardnosed in business dealings. Many acquaintances, few friends, but he cherishes those few. Stubborn and high-handed on occasion. But he loves his wife and children, and he's no bigot. He values honesty. He'd like you."

"But not for a daughter-in-law."

"What makes you think you'd want Gabriel Tam for a father-in-law? Some Core World dandy like me, who's never gotten his hands dirty from a day's work?"

"Well… " She felt completely flustered. "I don't know how we started talking about this, I really don't."

He shrugged. "You wouldn't see much of him in any event, as long as Simon and River are fugitives. But it could cause you to become unexpectedly wealthy, and that's not always a good thing. Kaywinnit, have you ever been to a Core World?"

"Twice. But I wouldn't say I saw the better parts. A junkyard on Ariel, and the bottom of a trash chute on Bellerophon." He reached for her hand. She tugged back out of reflex, but he held it fast, and she stilled. "I'm getting your hand dirty."

"Yes. And my fancy Core-made linen sleeve, too." He examined her fingers. "Your nails are short, but carefully trimmed and well-cared-for, like your ship." He turned her hand over. "They're capable hands, like his." He rubbed a thumb across her palm, feeling the faint calluses. "Even the same calluses, though his are from different tools. Yes, very capable hands. But entirely a woman's." He let go of her. "Kaywinnit, Simon's father is a Core World aristocrat, but he's a practical man and nobody's fool. I'm going to have a talk with that boy, because, frankly, I think he's been taking a foolish chance, risking losing you over his father's permission."

-0-

"You know, I'm truly startin to wonder if I got back on the right boat." Mal stood at the lower entrance to the cargo bay, watching Simon strain for a final repetition on Jayne's weight bench. The big merc stood over him, waiting to take the bar. He'd come to the infirmary looking for Simon, and the boy's drawn-out grunt from the cargo bay had drawn him on.

The two exercising men looked his way. "Wouldn't hurt for you and the flyboy to take a turn either," Jayne said as the doctor dropped the bar into its rest. "Well, maybe not the flyboy. Zoë works him over enough as is. But a good workout makes a man easier to live with. Burns out all the restless mean in im."

"I can see that." Simon mopped his face with a towel. "Look what a choirboy it's made of you."

"If you wanna start crackin stupid jokes, you gotta learn to fly. It's a rule. Don't forget we're squarin off on the mat for brawlin practice later."

"Wouldn't miss it. I'm going to become the most fearsome trauma surgeon ever. No patient will dare argue a bill with me."

Mal stepped forward. "I'm afraid I've gotta interrupt the hilarity for a bit. Doc, can you come with me to sickbay?"

The boy's manner changed instantly. "Is someone hurt?"

"Nothin like that. Jayne, wait here or go someplace else, but leave us be." As if the big merc didn't know exactly what was up, having come to Mal with the plan in the first place.

In the infirmary, Mal slid the doors shut behind them. "I'm not a man to dance around a subject, so I'm gonna speak plain. What are your intentions toward little Kaylee?"

Simon's mouth opened wide. "My…"

"You heard me right. She hasn't been her regular sunny self since you and her got drunk with Jayne, and I want that girl back. When I offered her a job on this ship, her pa came to see what manner of folk she'd be travelin with. You could tell it would have broke his heart to tell her 'no,' but that didn't stop him from asking me some mighty pointy questions and squeezing a promise or two out of me. While she's on my crew, I stand _in loco parentis _to her, and I aim to stand up to that job right now_._" Mal savored the Latin phrase River had given him to memorize; somehow it gave the silly ceremony some weight. "So I'll ask again. What do you want with her?"

"I love her," he said simply.

Mal nodded. "And?"

"And I want her for a wife, if she decides she'll have me for a husband."

"After approaches by licensed middlemen, and a proper offer of gifts, and legal papers drawn up, and a parade with jugglers and trained bears, I suppose. Well, as this ship's captain and Kaylee's stand-in father, you've got my permission. And your father's, if my guess about 'Mr. Thompson' is on the mark." He raised a finger. "But remember where you are now. I don't spose a couple of words from two old men is gonna make you unbend overnight, but you're gonna have to do things different if you want to get somewhere with this. Don't worry so much about sayin the right thing, cause you won't regardless. Don't try to be clever. And most especially, don't keep her waiting just cause you're worried about what's proper instead of what feels right. What's proper on Osiris will likely get the climate control futzed up in your room." He dropped what he hoped was a confident smile on the befuddled young man. "You got a good head and a good heart. That's what she wants from you. Just offer her that, and you won't need a merger contract to make each other happy."

-0-

Landing at Boros went smoother than expected. The landing field was modern without being Core World automated: Wash brought _Serenity_ down to their assigned berth on manual control using guidance beacons, and no ground lock took the engine and helm from him at touchdown. Since they were landing only to disembark a passenger, Customs didn't even bother to meet them at berth, instead waiting for their rider to check in at the port building.

"I'll help ya with the bags." Jayne reached for the one containing the Lassiter.

'Thompson' stopped him with a gesture. "I'll need to carry it through alone. Best not to draw attention to my luggage before I reach check-in."

"Gonna have any trouble getting that through?" Mal nodded toward the bag holding their hopes for freedom.

'Thompson' – everyone knew or suspected his true identity by now, but made no mention - shook his head. "Not if I present my Ident card before anything happens to draw their suspicion. They won't give my bags a second look. Probably dispatch a porter for me, actually."

"Huh. What about delivery to our client?"

"Just as you specified, Captain. I have people for this sort of thing. We've done it before, just not with an item carrying an insured value of half a million credits."

The entire ship's complement had assembled in the cargo bay to see the man off. He shook hands with the men first, Simon last of all, lingering with hands and eyes locked. Mal figured the two had shared a more tender moment of parting in private earlier, away from the eyes of others.

Then he tried to farewell the womenfolk, and things took somewhat of a turn. Zoë shocked every male aboard, Mal included, by stepping up to the man and pressing lips to his forehead with a hand at the back of his neck. Inara kissed three fingers and touched them to his lips. A dewy-eyed Kaylee put arms around him and kissed his cheek, whispering something in his ear that brought a smile. River wrapped arms around his neck and covered him with little-girl kisses, then clung to him a moment more before letting go and stepping back.

"Mister," said Wash, "you have _got_ to give me the name of your aftershave."


	7. Final Addendum

FOUR WEEKS AFTER BOROS

"Simon, you gotta talk her outta this." Jayne stood at the infirmary door, as if to bar entry.

"I tried. I'm sure you did too. It's her life, Jayne."

"Gor-_rammit_, you people are stubborn. The fella we took to Boros. That was your pa, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

Jayne's eyes hooded. "He wasn't what I expected."

"Me neither. Let's go in and give it one more try." They went in together, brushing the jamb with their shoulders.

River reclined on the exam table, waiting. "Yes, I'm sure. Two down, twelve to go. No guarantees, no safety net, just close my eyes and jump. Get on with it. You know I hate needles."

"You're doing so well. Why risk it?" But Simon filled the syringe as he spoke.

"I'm better, but I'm not cured, and I never will be if I stop now." Her voice changed. "A girl can get awful tired of people askin her who she is today, specially if she's not sure herself. I want a real repair, Simon, not just a workaround." She made a face at the needle, then closed her eyes. "All aboard." As Jayne hovered over her and Simon inserted the needle, she said, "Love both a ya. See you on the other side."

FOUR MONTHS AFTER BOROS

"So, Meester Reynolds. You come to gloat, yes?" The voice was the same, Mal noted. Niska looked across the table in the visitors' room at him, still wearing his glasses, dressed in a suit instead of the prison garb his two hulking bodyguards wore. He looked just as he had when he'd stood over Mal, taunting, while he'd applied sharp edges and electricity to his bound and beaten captive. But there was a brittle quality to him that hadn't been there before. Mal figured being sentenced to prison at a trial that had been waved all over inhabited space might have something to do with that.

"Not hardly. You're not gettin half what you deserve."

Niska showed a little tooth, but the gesture wasn't a smile. He rose. "Take a walk with me, Mr. Reynolds. I am deweloping taste for fresh air, and it is on the way to the front gate. Your visit will be brief, I think."

The uniformed door guard stepped aside as Niska approached and gestured Mal through ahead of him. An inmate/bodyguard followed close behind, with Niska and the other bodyguard right after. Mal said, "This your usual exercise period?"

"My exercise period is from waking to sleeping, Mr. Reynolds. I am given some… accommodation due to my advanced age. And my generosity."

The yard was a grassy little park, greener than the world beyond the walls that Mal had crossed on the way in. There was no sign of a guard out here, but Mal was sure they were being carefully watched and recorded.

"There are no listening devices in use while I am out here," Niska said, as if guessing his thought. "Another little accommodation." The little hwundan turned to him. "You are, as I say, extraordinary man. Who would guess you could set me up so well? With priceless antique the police have been searching the 'Verse for, and a rock-solid paper trail from its theft to my door - transported by Core's biggest shipper, no less. I would be very interested to know how you accomplished it. Very interested."

Mal looked at the sky. "I thought we knew each other better than that by now. Not about to boast to you, Niska."

The little man took off his glasses and a kerchief from his pocket and wiped them. "I heff made myself comfortable here. Beezniss is still running, though not with usual efficiency. I am makeenk friends on the parole board. My sentence was thirty years, but it will not be so very long, I think, before I leave these walls behind." He put on his glasses and stared up at Mal, eyes glinting. Mal decided the brittle quality was a mixture of hatred and fear. But that was just fine, as long as the two were mixed in the proper portions.

Mal leaned forward. "That's exactly what I keep tellin myself. But not the way you mean it." He made a gesture that took in the walls around them. "This was just the first snap of my teeth, you little uhmuo. There's business between us that won't be finished till I feel your throat in my hands."

Niska stilled, and Mal knew fear was the stronger. He took a step forward and watched the little man step back, even though the two brutes stood ready on either side. Mal gave him a feral grin. It was as he'd thought: Niska had lost his taste for up close and personal, at least with the 'real' Malcolm Reynolds. The little sneak would never willingly get within Mal's reach again. He curled his lip at the two bodyguards. "You think they're the reason I'm walkin out of here and leavin you alive, you got a short memory. I come to tell you to use those friends on the parole board to make sure you don't set foot out of this place before I'm dead or mellowed out. Else you won't draw two breaths as a free man." He turned for the gate. "And I plan on livin a long time, and I just get crankier the older I get."


End file.
